| dc.description.abstract | It has been a common occurrence for tyres to lose pressure over time even if they do not have punctures. This is due to hitting potholes, carbs, varying temperatures, normal pressure loss during the tyre’s life cycle as well as parking for long periods of time. These losses therefore result in a lot of time being wasted in driving to the service bay to inflate to the required pressures and even more time is wasted when the vehicle cannot be driven in the condition of a deflated tyre, therefore requiring that the tyre is removed from the vehicle, taken to a service bay for inflation and then re-installed on the vehicle which is a very great inconvenience to the driver. Also underinflated tyres result in reduced fuel economy, quick tyre wear as well as improper rolling and uncomfortable rides. Through various desk-based research methods, considerable amounts of data and information were obtained regarding low tyre pressure and its possible solutions. Some of these methods included reading online journals, various related reports, textbooks and searching the internet web, interviews and surveys. The data collected was recorded, tabulated and analysed as and when obtained. After analysing the data, a protype inflator pump was designed and experiments carried out to determine its performance capacity. From the findings of Experiments 1 and 2, it was established that the developed prototype was most effective with the Bajaj motorcycle tyre, and the unmounted tyre because of the absence of extra forces resulting from the weight of the vehicle. The pump therefore was unable to inflate all tyres as expected. Experiment 3 was conducted to determine the actual volume delivered by the system so as to roughly establish how fast the system can inflate. The prototype inflator pump took longer than the required time to fill the tyre, which indicates that the prototype’s functionality is still poor, so it requires better modifications by future researchers. It was concluded that the prototype inflator pump is able to efficiently inflate an unmounted tyre without the weight due to the vehicle. | en_US |
