Tire balance

Tire balance, also referred to as tire unbalance or imbalance, describes the distribution of mass within an automobile tire or the entire wheel (including the rim) to which it is attached.

When the wheel rotates, asymmetries of mass may cause it to hop or wobble, which can cause ride disturbances, usually vertical and lateral vibrations. It can also result in a wobbling of the steering wheel or of the entire vehicle. The ride disturbance, due to unbalance, usually increases with speed. Vehicle suspensions can become excited by unbalance forces when the speed of the wheel reaches a point that its rotating frequency equals the suspension’s resonant frequency.

Tires are balanced in factories and repair shops by two methods: static balancers and dynamic balancers. Tires with high unbalance forces are downgraded or rejected. When tires are fitted to wheels at the point of sale, they are measured again on a balancing machine, and correction weights are applied to counteract the combined effect of the tire and wheel unbalance. After sale, tires may be rebalanced if driver perceives excessive vibration. Balancing is not to be confused with wheel alignment.

Static balance can be measured by a static balancing machine where the tire is placed in its vertical axis on a non-rotating spindle tool. The spot on the tire with the greatest mass is acted upon by gravity to deflect the tooling downward. The amount of deflection indicates the magnitude of the unbalance. The angle of the deflection indicates the angular location of the unbalance. In tire manufacturing factories, static balancers operate by use of sensors mounted to the spindle assembly. In tire retail shops, static balancers are usually non-rotating bubble balancers, where the magnitude and angle of the unbalance is observed by looking at the center bubble in an oil-filled glass sighting gauge. While some very small shops which lack specialized machines still do this process, they have been largely replaced in larger shops with machines.

Dynamic balance describes the forces generated by asymmetric mass distribution when the tire is rotated, usually at a high speed. In the tire factory, the tire and wheel are mounted on a balancing machine test wheel, the assembly is accelerated up to a speed of 100 RPM (10 to 15 mph with recent high sensitivity sensors) or higher, 300 RPM (55 to 60 mph with typical low sensitivity sensors), and forces of unbalance are measured by sensors as the tire rotates. These forces are resolved into static and couple values for the inner and outer planes of the wheel, and compared to the unbalance tolerance (the maximum allowable manufacturing limits). If the tire is not checked, it has the potential to wobble and perform poorly. In tire retail shops, tire/wheel assemblies are checked on a spin-balancer, which determines the amount and angle of unbalance. Balance weights are then fitted to the outer and inner flanges of the wheel. Dynamic balance is better (it is more comprehensive) than static balance alone, because both couple and static forces are measured and corrected.

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Wikipedia