Research On Cornering And Inclination Characteristics Of A Finite Element Tire Model With Discretized Carcass

Tire finite element method is a very important branch of the study of the mechanicalproperties of the tire, since its establishment by purely physical models and materialparameters based on tire structure can be more accurate to describe various mechanicalproperties of tires. It has been widely used in recent years. But the freedom of the finiteelement model is very complex for the model to be calculated, it’s very time-consumingand can be hardly used in vehicle dynamic simulation. In order to ensure the sufficientprediction accuracy and reduce the computation time to improve the efficiency of thesimulation, this paper introduce a new method to simplify the complete tire finite elementmodel by which can build a highly efficient model. This model can precisely predict thesteady-state property of tire and reduce computation time when simulating. The maincontents are as follows:Firstly, according to the manufacturer’s geometry data and material parametersestablished a high precision finite element model of a tire. The steel structure in tire isdescribed by elastic material model, and all the rubber structures are described by Yeohmodel. Verified the accuracy of Yeoh model by the test data of the rubber of tire.Secondly, verified the tire finite element model by the contact patch of tire, by thetest data of tire radial stiffness, by the test data of tire lateral and longitudinal stiffness, bythe test data of tire steady-state condition experiment. Analyzed the accuracy of varioustypes of verification and find that the imprecise friction model may cause the inaccuracyverification of the tire lateral and longitudinal stiffness.Then introduces the modeling idea of FETire model, with reference to the theoreticalmodel of ring model proposed the main idea of the discretized modeling method in thispaper which is divided into three steps to simplified the structure of the original model.The first step is to discrete the sidewall of the tire by three dimensional spring elements and identify the spring stiffness by the relationship between spring stiffness and tirestiffness which is analyzed by large amount of test data. Then verified the accuracy of thesimple model by making a comparison between test data and simulation data, andanalyzed the cause of the deviation in the comparison. The second step is to discrete thecarcass in tire crown by a network of spring elements. The method to identify theparameter is similar to the method in first step. The simple model was also verified bycomparison. The third step is to replace the non-linear belt structure by linear elements.The method to identify the material parameter is similar to the method in first step. Themodel acquired in this step is the final stage of the simplified model and it was alsoverified by the simulation data and test data. At last, we can make sure that this model isavailable to predict the mechanical properties of tire in the condition of steady-statecornering and inclination of small angle.Finally, made a statistical comparison of the simulation time between the simplifiedmodel of different steps and the original model, found that the simplified model canensure a sufficient accuracy of prediction while simulation time is only the eleventh of theoriginal model’s. The simplified model substantially increased the computationalefficiency.