Modeling of Tire Rolling Contact Response by REF Model

Modeling of tire dynamic response rolling over an obstacle is important to accurately determine vehicle loading spectrum. Based on the model of Ring on the Elastic/Viscoelastic Foundation (REF), the tire dynamic response when rolling over uneven road/cleat is simulated in this paper. Meirovitch modal analysis method and first-order matrix perturbation theory are applied to obtain the forced response of damping REF vibration. An effective numerical quadrature method is developed to obtain the time-varying modal coordinates of the system under various loading conditions. Numerical examples of a tire rolling over a cleat with different velocities and initial static deflections are given to verify the developed method. It is found that tire wheel loads shows quite different behaviors with both static deflection and rolling velocities.