CFD study of aerodynamic performance of non-pneumatic tyre with hexagonal spokes

Non-pneumatic tyres (NPT) provide a greater advantage over the pneumatic type owing to their construct which increases the reliability of the tyre operation and effectively reduces maintenance involved. Analysing the aerodynamic forces acting on a NPT becomes a crucial factor in understanding it's suitability for practical implementation. In the present work, the aerodynamic performance of a NPT using CFD tool - SimScale(R) is studied. This work includes a comparative study of a pneumatic tyre, a NPT with wedge spokes and a NPT with hexagonal spokes (NPT-HS). The effect of air velocity, steering (yaw) angle and camber angle on the aerodynamic performance of the NPT-HS is evaluated using CFD. By increasing the steering angle from 0 degrees to 15 degrees, the lift coefficient decreases by 37% approximately at all velocities. Whereas drag coefficient initially decreases by 21% till 7.5 degrees steering angle and then starts increasing. Increasing camber angle from 0 degrees to 1.5 degrees, both drag and lift coefficients goes on decreasing by approximately 7% and 27% respectively.