Automatic tire inflation system

摘要

An automatic tire inflation system for a vehicle (10) includes a plurality of wheel assemblies (14). Each wheel assembly includes a rotatable portion (30) connected to its associated tire (16) and a non-rotatable portion (24) connected to the vehicle chassis (28). A sealed air passageway is provided between an inlet (62) in the non-rotatable portion and an outlet (64) in the rotatable portion of the wheel assembly which is connected to the tire. The sealed air passageway is provided in part by way of a longitudinally extending bore (66) in the spindle (24) which communicates with a chamber (60) defined by a sleeve (42) and a pair of air seals (52, 54) between the sleeve and spindle. A manually actuable selector device (102) in the vehicle is provided to permit the user to select one of a plurality of preset air pressure settings for the tires. An air regulating system quickly responds to the selected setting to automatically regulate the air pressure within the tires at the preset pressure associated with the selected setting of the selector device. A master-slave (166, 168) valving arrangement controlled by pilot air is preferably used to perform the inflation or deflation process.