Estimation of Tire Temperature Distribution and Rolling Resistance under Running Conditions Including Environmental Factors

Running tires are in thermal equilibrium between the generation of internal heat due to the viscoelasticity of the rubber material and the effects of their thermal environment. Since the viscoelasticity shows temperature dependency, there is a strong correlation between this thermal equilibrium and the rolling resistance. However, there are only few methods which can be used for estimating the amount of rolling resistance of an actual running vehicle using this correlation. In this paper, we would like to estimate the temperature distribution in the running tire by means of the quasi-static model of the finite element method (FEM) in consideration of the thermal environment of real road driving and introduce an approach toward estimating the rolling resistance of an actual running vehicle based on the correlation between the temperature distribution in the tire and the rolling resistance.