Tyre wear is of significant concern for the automotive industry due to multiple reasons including vehicle performance, safety, economy, environmental (particulate matter emission) aspects, etc. Therefore, ensuring enhanced tyre tread wear resistance is one of the most important criteria while developing a new tyre. Tyre wear phenomenon is influenced by various factors, such as road conditions, driving habits, maintenance practices and tyre design parameters (construction, geometry and material). The wear assessment through the classical field-testing approach consumes significant time and resources. Therefore, digital predictive tools are very useful in predicting wear characteristics at the early stage of the tyre development process.
In this study, an attempt has been made to capture the impact of tread geometry, tread material, vehicle geometry, vehicle speed, test track geometry, etc. on tyre wear. A commercial finite element code, Abaqus was utilized for tyre structural simulation and the frictional energy has been considered as a key indicator to estimate the propensity of tyre wear. The vehicle modelling is done in a multibody dynamics software Adams. It has been found that tyre stiffness and tread block geometry have a direct influence on tyre wear potential. A correlation between cornering stiffness and wear potential has been also observed. Furthermore, from a vehicle perspective, the effect of the positioning of the tyre on corresponding axles and test track geometry has been analysed.