Modelling and Analysis of Rolling Truck Tire over Dry and Snow-Covered Surfaces Using Advanced Computational Techniques

This paper presents a novel approach to modelling and analyzing a 315/80R22.5-sized truck tire under snow-covered road conditions. The tire is modelled using Finite Element Method (FEM) in ESI Virtual Performance Solutions (VPS) software. The tire model consists of various parts representing the tread, under tread, carcass, sidewalls and beads in addition to the rim. The tire model is then verified in both static and dynamic domains against experimental data. The experimental results were conducted over a dry surface at a high-speed test track in Hällered, Sweden, at a constant travelling speed of 80 km/h, and a constant vertical load of 27 kN with sensors depicting both temperature and inflation pressure changes throughout a 40-minute run. A tire thermal model is developed, and the simulation results are correlated with the measured temperature of the tested tires. In addition, the rolling resistance variation with speed, temperature and inflation pressure is predicted and analyzed. The road is then simulated with a covered snow layer using the Smoothed-Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) technique and calibrated using both pressure-sinkage and shear-strength tests. The simulation results of the tire-covered snow road interaction provided comparable data against published literature with regards to temperature impacting measured rolling resistance, having a higher effect than the longitudinal speed of the tire as per the experimental data. The benefit of this paper is to emphasize the importance of the computer simulation techniques to predict a truck tire temperature-dependent rolling resistance coefficient on both dry and snow-covered roads at various operating conditions.