Study of Tire Contribution to Vehicle Noise, Ride and Handling Performance using DOE (Design of Experiments) Techniques

Automotive Industry has always kept the customer in focus and strived for their delight using innovative technologies and meticulous engineering. From a vehicle dynamics point of view, the customer’s performance expectations have diversified over the last decade. To meet these expectations, there has been significant developments in the system and subsystem engineering of chassis elements. One such contributing element is the tire as it can synergize with vehicle noise, ride and handling performance irrespective of propulsion energies. These critical customer touch points, they need to be optimized and tuned to meet stringent OEM targets. The objective of this paper is to understand the aspects of tire design, structure and tread compound on vehicle noise, ride and handling performance using a full factorial DOE (Design of Experiment) approach. The traditional iterative approach of tire tuning is time-intensive and may not quantify the interdependence within the tire. Since tire development is a conscious trade-off process, the use of DOE approach aids in understanding individual contribution and interaction effects. This study was carried out using 16 different tire sets, high dynamic instrumentation, advanced analysis software and logics on a popular Japanese Hatchback under controlled proving ground test conditions. Some of the significant findings of this study are presented in this paper.