Identification of Parametric Tire Models for the Fatigue Evaluation of Suspension Components

Today the stresses in rotating suspension components under physical load conditions are calculated with assumed distributions of contact forces between tire and wheel since the true distributions are not known. This causes uncertainties in the fatigue evaluation and requires an experimental verification of the attained results.

The paper describes how the desired force distributions are identified from strains measured on wheels while rolling under load. On the one hand the purpose is to find out how the wheel loads, the tire pressure and tire parameters, e.g. the tire height influence the load transfer between tire and wheel, and on the other hand to derive distributions of the contact forces for reliable stress calculations. To verify the results, identified force distributions are applied to calculate strains, which are compared to measured strains.