Investigation of Automotive Tire Contact Stress Under Real Rolling Conditions

The paper presents a method of simultaneously measuring the normal and shear stresses in the tire-road contact patch. For this purpose a tri-axial road transducer was designed to work under real rolling conditions. Its design allows the real contact surface to remain unaltered. The tests were performed using passenger car and truck tires, in braking, traction and free rolling conditions. The resulting stress distributions on the contact patch length are displayed as contour or relief maps. The rolling conditions are strongly influencing the longitudinal stress distribution.