Dependence of the contact area on the velocity of a rolling tire

Abstract

It is known that the eigenfrequencies of a rolling tire depend on the velocity of rotation. We distinguish two causes for the stiffness increase: the frequency dependence of the complex modulus of the materials and the geometrical stiffness. The real part of the Young's modulus is monotonic according to the frequency. It contributes for an important part to the stiffening. The geometrical stiffness also increases with the rotational velocity. A consequence of these effects is the modification of the size of the contact area for different velocities of a rolling tire. Here we first present experimental results estimating the size of the contact area for a tire in statics and for different rolling velocities. Differences of 20% can be observed. Then the viscoelastic behaviours of the tire materials are presented and experimental results showing the frequency dependence of the complex modulus of the tire constitutive materials are given. Then finite element computations are presented with a real distribution of materials in the tire section and the size of the contact area is estimated and compared to experimental measurements. These results could improve the modelling of tire road interaction for tire noise predictions.