Energy analysis of the Von Schlippe tyre model with application to shimmy

Abstract

Shimmy is an engineering example of self-excited vibrations. Much research on shimmy has considered the tyre as a positive feedback or negative damping to introduce instability of the entire system. In this context, we focus on the behaviour of the tyre under periodic excitations. The Von Schlippe tyre model is selected and the energy flow method is applied to illustrate the energy transfer by the tyre during shimmy. The energy flow method evaluates the tyre performance with a prescribed sinusoidal motion and provides a novel evaluation method for tyre models. With the help of straight contact line assumption in the Von Schlippe tyre model, the relative motion between the contact line and the wheel centre is studied to understand the path dependency of the energy transfer. It turns out that the tyre is extracting energy from the forward motion to induce unstable lateral and yaw vibrations when the motion or orientation of the contact line has a phase lead with respect to the wheel centre.