Vehicle behavior is strongly influenced by tire performance, as tires serve as
the primary interface between the vehicle and the road surface. Since identical
vehicles equipped with different tire sets—or even the same tires operating
under varying thermal and wear conditions—can exhibit significantly different
handling characteristics, this study aims to quantify their impact on both
steady-state and transient cornering responses through a dedicated evaluation
methodology.
To demonstrate the generalization of the proposed approach, three completely
different validated vehicle digital twins—a passenger car, a sports car, and a
formula car—are analyzed in a virtual environment, employing Vi-Car Real Time
for vehicle and scenario representations, and RIDEsuite for tire modeling,
considering thermal and wear effects. The simulations were designed using a
structured design of experiments approach, resulting in 15 predefined
combinations of tire temperature and wear states.
Results show that operating outside the tire’s optimal thermal and wear
conditions significantly affects vehicle handling balance, responsiveness, and
driver perception of agility. These effects scale with tire performance level:
while standard passenger car tires exhibit limited sensitivity, slick formula
tires show substantial variations in grip and cornering stiffness, reaching
deviations of approximately 10% and 35% from their nominal values,
respectively.
Vehicle steady-state analyses indicate that front axle wear increases understeer,
while rear axle wear reduces overall stability—resulting, for example, in a 25%
increase in peak sideslip angle in the sports car configuration. Transient
analyses further confirm that temperature has a more pronounced effect than
wear, particularly on yaw rate and lateral acceleration response times, with
variations reaching up to ±10% relative to optimal thermal conditions.
This work highlights the need to include tire condition effects in handling
target definition and validation processes, recommending careful monitoring of
tire states during standardized ISO maneuvers. Fixed metrics should be replaced
by performance ranges that reflect actual tire operating states, whether for
custom-developed or off-the-shelf tires.