Three Dimensional Refined Finite Element Analysis Of The Bead Area Of Radial Tire By Submodeling Method

Due to the frequent occurrence of tire failure damage of BTR tire, more and more attention is paid to the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of the dangerous region in the bead area of BTR tire. The tire performance optimization for the tire dangerous region mainly depends on two methods: one concerns the tire structure, through adjusting the structure parameters of tire to improve the tire performance; the other concerns the physical properties of tire rubber materials, through adjusting the material parameters of rubber to improve the tire performance. However, due to the complexity of tire manufacturing process, the former is usually time and money consuming while the latter becomes more and more appreciated by the tire manufacturing companies with the development of tire materials technology. However, it is difficult to get optimized material parameters only by tests. Numerical simulation, which is little in the literature on this topic, must be referred to. Moreover, the Finite Element Analysis of tire with initial crack still remains insufficient while cracks usually occur within interfaces of tire materials in practical usage. This dissertation makes a preliminary study on the problems above.With the application of ABAQUS package, the three dimensional FEA solving strategy of tire structure technology based on the submodeling method is founded, with the cases of assembly, inflation, static loading and so on. Necessary evaluation of the FEA results is conducted. Moreover, the three dimensional refined FEA of the dangerous region in tire bead area is carried out.Keeping tire structure fixed, the influence caused by rubber materials with different hardness to the mechanical behaviors of dangerous region in the state of inflation and static loading is analyzed, through adjusting the rubber materials properties in the dangerous region in tire bead area. It is revealed that the mechanical properties of chafer end could be improved by increasing the modulus at certain stretch of rubber of chafer and carcass as well as decreasing the modulus at certain stretch of rubber of quandian.Three dimensional refined FEA of tire model with initial crack is carried out, and the stress and strain fields around crack tips of cracks in different lengths are obtained; inspecting the influence of rubber materials with different hardness to tire crack tip, it is found that the scheme of increasing the modulus at certain stretch of chafer rubber and carcass rubber brings certain improvements for tires with initial cracks.