Tire simulation to optimize road noise

Tires have a significant impact on vehicle road noise. In the past, tire development has been driven by testing that is costly and time-consuming. Simulation approaches are becoming more important as the need for NVH performance requirements rises and vehicle development cycles get shorter. Therefore, simulation techniques should be used to tires at an early stage. Among various road noise, the noise of 80~160 Hz is easily felt when driving on the rough road, and this noise has a great relationship with the tire structural design. How to improve the road noise problem through tire simulation has become an important issue, so this paper puts forward the concept of virtual tire design and clarifies the responsibility of automotive enterprises and tire suppliers. In virtual tire design or tuning, an appropriate tire model is crucial for road noise performance. The CDtire model can meet the requirements, so in this article, CDtire is used to improve road noise at 80-120Hz. To obtain an accurate tire model, experimental validation of the model modes is required. The parameters and structure of the tire model are adjusted through DOE (Design of Experiments) to generate several alternative model scenarios, and then the tire model is analyzed and compared to obtain the best-performing tire scenario. This needs the tire model to provide parameters and structure for the production of prototype tires, which completes the virtual design of the tire. Testing of the prototype tires obtained from the virtual design of the tires shows that the road noise at 80-120 Hz was reduced by 1.8 dB(A), which is similar to the trend of the virtual analysis. The whole tire optimization process shows that the virtual tire design can effectively improve this road noise problem, and it is known that tire structures of belt, apex, belt, and tread have a great relationship with the 80-120Hz road noise.