Vehicle rim with tire bead retaining humps

Claim 1

A rim for supporting a pneumatic tire, said rim comprising a pair of circumferentially extending flanges in axially spaced apart relationship, and a pair of bead seats for seating the bead portion of a tire and each of which extends axially inwardly from a respective flange, at least one of the bead seats being provided at its axially inner margin with a bead retaining means comprising a plurality of radially outwardly projecting humps formed integrally with the rim and forming a circumferentially extending abutment face characterized in that the abutment face is of varying radial height with respect to the bead seat and comprises a plurality of circumferentially extending humps which merge one into another, each hump having a radial height which gradually and continuously increases circumferentially from the minimum radius of said bead seat to a maximum height and subsequently gradually and continuously decreases circumferentially to said minimum radius of the bead seat where adjacent humps merge, the radially outer surface of said humps between the points of maximum height for any pair of circumferentially adjacent humps being a continuous arc having a radius greater than the minimum radius of the bead seats and forming a tangent to said bead seats midway between said points of maximum height.