Structural Optimization Design And Manufacture Of Polyurethane Non-Pneumatic Tires

Tires are the critical components of automobiles,with a direct impact on the vehicle’s handling,comfort,safety,and other aspects.In recent years,non-pneumatic tires have been developed as a new type of tire designed to meet the special usage environment and performance requirements of different customers.Among them,polyurethane non-pneumatic tires have the advantages of explosion-proof,low cost,excellent wear resistance and so on.Tire enterprises and research institutes in various countries are exploring different structures of polyurethane non-pneumatic tires.This article briefly describes the history of tires development and summarizes the research status of non-pneumatic tires.In order to improve the roundness of tires and improve the phenomenon of large stress differences in different positions of spoke tires,two innovative designs were proposed: a solid polyurethane non-pneumatic tire with protruding structures welded on the wheel hub,and a polyurethane spoke non-pneumatic tire structure with an equal load-bearing area.The performance of these tires was studied by ABAQUS,and the tires with the optimal structure were manufactured.The following are the main research contents and conclusions of this paper.(1)The influence of the width,the angle,and the number of protrusions on the tire stress,sinking depth,contact stress,the mean value of maximum stress and the average sinking depth during tire rolling process under static load was simulated and analyzed.The results showed that increasing the width and angle of the protrusions appropriately can reduce the maximum stress value and sinking depth,but the maximum contact stress value will increase.This study determined that the optimal structure parameters for the protrusions width,angle,and number of the tire were 25 mm,45°,and 8,respectively.The average sinking depth of the structure tire during rolling under 6000 N load was 1.2422 mm,with high rigidity,which met the initial design requirement of improving tire roundness.(2)The influence of the V-shaped spoke thickness,the spoke angle,and double-layer spoke structure of the polyurethane spoke non-pneumatic tire with an equal load-bearing area on the tire stress,sinking depth,contact stress,the mean value of maximum stress and the average sinking depth during tire rolling process under static load was simulated and analyzed.The results showed that appropriately increasing the spoke width,decreasing the spoke angle,and using a double-layer spoke structure can reduce the maximum stress value and maximum contact stress value.This study determined that the optimal structure parameters for the spoke thickness and angle of the single-layer spoke tire were 18 mm and 22.5°,respectively.The maximum difference between the maximum stress value and its average value was 6.09%of the average value,and the maximum stress value difference at different positions during rolling was not large,which conformed to the initial design requirement of reducing the significant stress differences of the spoke tire at different positions.(3)Finally,the design of the casting molds for the two types of polyurethane non-pneumatic tires,the exploration of the tire casting process,and the manufacturing of tires were completed.The manufactured tire samples meet the required dimensions,have a good appearance,and provide guidance for the future industrial production of tires.