Materials Testing for Finite Element Tire Model

The use of accurate tire material properties is a major requirement for conducting a successful tire analysis using finite element method (FEM). Obtaining these material properties however poses a major challenge for tire modelers and researchers due to the complex nature of tire material and associated proprietary protections of constituent material properties by tire manufactures. In view of this limitation, a simple and effective procedure for generating tire materials data used in tire finite element analysis (FEA) is presented in this paper. All the tire test specimens were extracted from a tire product based on special considerations such as specimen dimension and shape, test standard, precondition of specimen and test condition for cords. The required material properties of tire rubber component, including hyperelasticity and viscoelasticity were obtained using simple uni-axial tension test. The reinforcement elastic modulus was established from Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA) in low frequency range. The rubber nonlinear material property was modeled in ABAQUS/CAE. The method used to select an appropriate rubber strain energy model is also presented. In the absence of a tire geometric profile from the manufacturer, an image processing method was adopted. The comparison of tire vertical stiffness and footprint area between model and test results showed good correlation. Preliminary application of the model for tire Noise, Vibration and Harshness (NVH) was also established. Hence FEA of tire behavior for different operating conditions can now be carried out with tire material properties generated from materials testing.