In-depth analysis of hydroplaning phenomenon accounting for tire wear on smooth ground

Abstract

Studying hydroplaning behavior is of crucial importance in order to enhance driver safety and mitigate the environmental impact as it is estimated that about 128 million tires are replaced prematurely each year. It is therefore necessary to take the wear of tires into account in order to increase their safe duration of use. The recent progress of numerical and experimental tools can lead to a better understanding of the hydroplaning phenomenon, including the possibility of studying the behavior of worn tires on wet roads. By coupling Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) and Finite Element (FE) methods for modeling such fluid–structure interactions (Fourey et al., 2017; Hermange et al., 2019; Hermange et al., 2019), the present study extends our understanding of the various mechanisms involved in hydroplaning and is thus a first step in that direction. The study revolves around systematic comparisons between brand new and worn tires, analyzing local effects in order to better understand global behavior through comparisons of numerical and experimental results. To simplify this initial exploration of the physical effects involved, only a smooth ground is considered.