An Experimental Study of Tire Standing Waves on a Small-Scale Test Rig

Small-scale test rigs for experimental investigations of tire standing wave instability are described. The rigs are used in experiments in which tire rotational speed is gradually increased passed the critical speed at which standing waves appear around the circumference of the tire. The first detailed results from one of the rigs are presented. Images grabbed from live video are processed to extract the spatial structure of the standing waves. Frequency and time domain vibrational data and temperature histories are also collected. The spatial frequencies for the standing wave are computed for four different tire pressures, and the results are shown to be in qualitative agreement with numerical results of previous researchers.