Tire Force Estimation Using Intelligent Tire System Detecting Carcass Deformation

In this paper, an intelligent tire system is designed to estimate tire force by detecting the tire carcass deformation. The intelligent tire system includes a set of marker points on the inner liner of the tire to locate the position of tire carcass and a camera mounted on the rim to capture the position of these points under different driving conditions. An image recognition program is used to identify the coordinates of the marker points in order to determine the deformation of the tire carcass. According to the tire carcass stiffness test and the general tire carcass deformation theory, an approximate linear relationship between tire force and carcass deformation in all directions was obtained. The vertical force of the tire is determined by the distance between adjacent marker points. The longitudinal force and lateral force of the tire are estimated by measuring the longitudinal and lateral displacements of the marker points. The innovation of this paper lies in the use of image recognition techniques to quantify the deformation of the tire carcass and the estimation of the tire force based on the relationship between the carcass deformation and the tire force which is considered to be linear. The steady-state tire characteristic tests under different input conditions are designed and the tire six component force is collected. The effectiveness of the designed intelligent tire system is investigated by comparing the experimental results with the intelligent tire system estimation results, and the results show that the system has good tire force estimation accuracy under both pure slip and combined slip conditions.