FIELD

The present disclosure relates to tire inflation systems and to a pressure supply control system. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to a method of determining the health of a seal in a tire inflation system.

BACKGROUND

Tire inflation systems for vehicles provide a vehicle the versatility of adjusting tire pressures while the vehicle is stationary or in motion. Advantageously, utilizing a tire inflation system may eliminate the need to manually check the tire pressure of each tire and manually adjust the tire pressure and may reduce maintenance requirements.

Tire inflation systems known in the art typically include one or more rotary air seals. Rotary air seals are provided to allow pressurized air to be transferred from a stationary portion of the system to a rotating portion of the system and vice versa. The rotary air seals are often the first component of a tire inflation system to exhibit degradation. Degradation of a rotary air seal may prevent the tire inflation system from being able to measure, increase, or decrease the tire pressure. Degradation of the rotary air seals may also cause other components of the tire inflation system to wear unnecessarily, which can shorten the effective life of those components. Therefore, it would be beneficial to provide a method for determining the health of a seal so that the seal can be repaired or replaced before seal degradation occurs.

SUMMARY

In an embodiment, the present disclosure provides for a method of determining the health of a seal of a tire inflation system on a vehicle. The method includes obtaining one or more pressure measurements of a tire of the vehicle with a pressure transducer in communication with an electronic control unit and sending the one or more pressure measurements to a computer network via a communication network that receives signals from the electronic control unit, the communication network including a telematics device in communication with the computer network, wherein the computer network is configured to determine the health of the seal based on the one or more pressure measurements communicated by the telematics device.

It should be understood that the summary above is provided to introduce in simplified form a selection of concepts that are further described in the detailed description. It is not meant to identify key or essential features of the claimed subject matter, the scope of which is defined uniquely by the claims that follow the detailed description. Furthermore, the claimed subject matter is not limited to implementations that solve any disadvantages noted above or in any part of this disclosure.

