Within the automotive industry, a typical way to account for tires in a roadnoise mission simulation is to use the “modal model” supplied by tire manufacturers. Even though this kind of models is certified by the suppliers and is very simple to use, it has the drawback to be disconnected from the physical description of the tire. This reflects in limiting the carmaker company to be able only to request certain modal characteristics to the supplier.
The aim of this paper is to present an accurate, yet easy to use, methodology to develop an FE model of a tire, to be used in a full-vehicle simulation. The determined model must be connected to the tire physical properties. These properties are not measured directly, but determined by tuning a properly created geometric FE model to the measured point inertances of the inflated tire. This allows creating the model only by using an optimization algorithm to tune such properties.
One of the key features of the developed tire model concerns its reduced dimensions in terms of number of nodes and elements. This is crucial in view of the inclusion of such a model in a full-vehicle simulation and can be achieved by assuming a two-dimensional multi-layer representation of the tire. Despite the simplicity of such an assumption, the accuracy of the model is checked by comparing the simulated hub forces in rolling conditions with properly obtained measurements for different tires. Moreover, the sensibility of the model to the physical characteristics of the simulation, such as the rolling speed, is verified with respect to measurements.