Prediction Of Tyre Force And Moment Characteristics During Vehicle Cornering Using Finite Element Techniques

Force and moment characteristics of pneumatic tyres play a vital role in the effective and efficient vehicle handling behaviour. Prediction of these transient characteristics during vehicle cornering behaviour using finite element techniques is a complex dynamic problem involving geometrical non-linearity, material non-linearity and boundary non-linearity. In addition, tyre materials are incompressible and are embedded with reinforcements, making them composite in nature. In the present study, three finite element techniques viz., Implicit Lagrangian Method, Implicit Mixed Lagrangian Eulerian Method and Explicit Lagrangian Method are used to simulate the dynamic cornering behaviour of a passenger car radial tyre. ABAQUS/Standard and ABAQUS/Explicit, popular general-purpose non-linear finite element codes, are used to simulate the cornering response at various loading and operating conditions. Applicability of these techniques to predict the force and moment characteristics for different cases is discussed. Force and moment characteristics are determined experimentally and are used to validate the predicted finite element results. Experiments needed in this process are found to be complex, cumbersome, time consuming and highly costly. Finite element predictions are observed to closely match with the Magic Formula curves determined experimentally. Mixed Lagrangian Eulerian analysis is found to be a cost effective and efficient tool to predict the cornering behaviour over the entire slip angle range, as cornering behaviour can be approximated to be steady state in nature. Explicit analysis is suitable to simulate transient cornering behaviour. This approach can be well integrated to the tyre design and development phase, which not only eliminates the prototyping of the tyre for every design alternative but also eliminates the unaffordable experiments on the physical tyre.