Development of an Experimentally Derived Tire and Road Surface Model for Vehicle Interior Noise Prediction

As vehicle development timelines continue to shorten and more emphasis is put on simulating vehicle dynamic phenomena; the importance of having physically correct inputs increases. For modeling the road noise phenomena, there are some methods used in the industry such as application of experimental spindle forces or vertical displacements applied to the tire patch. Each of these has limitations with respect to absolute accuracy or dependency of the input on suspension characteristics. For accurate evaluation of new designs, an invariant input which can reproduce measured vehicle cabin response is beneficial. Specifically, it is desired that significant improvement can be made over the spindle force method. To this end, a tire model derived from experimental data has been developed, along with three degree of freedom tire patch input displacements. When coupled with a vehicle model, road noise can be predicted accurately up to a frequency of 300Hz, enabling virtual testing of the suspension and body design changes.