Heavy truck tire tread and heavy truck tire

A heavy truck tire tread having a longitudinal direction, a lateral direction and a thickness direction, said tread comprising:

• longitudinal grooves separating longitudinal ribs, wherein two of the longitudinal grooves are a first shoulder groove and a second shoulder groove;
• a pair of opposing tread edges spaced apart along the lateral direction;
• a pair of shoulder ribs, each shoulder rib being adjacent to a respective tread edge of said pair of tread edges;
• wherein the shoulder ribs are solid ribs comprising sipes running at a sipe angle (α) relative to the lateral direction, wherein the sipes extend completely across the shoulder ribs from the shoulder grooves to the tread edges, wherein the sipes are full depth and lateral;
• wherein an average sipe angle (αA) over a center portion of said shoulder ribs is greater than 25° and less than 55° in absolute value;
• wherein the sipes are oriented relative to the rolling direction (RD) such that interior ends of the sipes at the first and the second shoulder grooves make contact with ground before exterior ends of the sipes at the tread edges;
• and
• wherein a ratio (SD) of an average sipe depth (ASD) with an average distance between consecutive sipes (d) is from 0.3-1.0.

A heavy truck tire tread having a longitudinal direction, a lateral direction and a thickness direction, said tread comprising:

• longitudinal grooves separating longitudinal ribs, wherein two of the longitudinal grooves are a first shoulder groove and a second shoulder groove;
• a pair of opposing tread edges spaced apart along the lateral direction;
• a pair of shoulder ribs, each shoulder rib being adjacent to a respective tread edge of said pair of tread edges;
• wherein the shoulder ribs are solid ribs comprising sipes running at a sipe angle (α) relative to the lateral direction, wherein the sipes extend completely across the shoulder ribs from the shoulder grooves to the tread edges, wherein the sipes are full depth and lateral and;
• wherein an average sipe angle (αA) over a center portion of said shoulder ribs is from 41°-85°;
• wherein the sipes are oriented relative to the rolling direction (RD) such that interior ends of the sipes at the first and the second shoulder grooves make contact with ground before exterior ends of the sipes at the tread edges;
• wherein the first one of the sipes intersects the tread edge at the first shoulder rib at a unique location in the longitudinal direction such that no other ones of the sipes in the first shoulder rib have a position in the longitudinal direction that is at the same position in the longitudinal direction as the unique location;
• and
• wherein the first one of the sipes is located in the first shoulder rib such that no other sipe in the first shoulder rib shares a common location in the longitudinal direction with any portion of the first one of the sipes.