Numerical Investigation of Effect of Membrane Thickness on the Performance of Cellular Shear Band Based Non-Pneumatic Tire

Abstract

Several treaded cellular shear bands have been investigated and it is found that the shear band with cellular geometry of (θ = −65°, h = 21) is the most promising to give us best contact pressure profile. To further optimize the design of the pneumatic tire made with this cellular geometry for NASA’s new moon mission, the Finite Element Method is used to investigate the effect of the thickness of membranes on the performance of the cellular shear band based non-pneumatic tire. In this research, we use the Lebanon sand found in New Hampshire and employ the Drucker-Prager/Cap plasticity constitutive law with hardening to model the sand. Penalty contact algorithm is used to model the tangential behavior of the contact between the tread and sand and Coulomb’s law is considered for the friction between tire and sand. The tires and tread are treated as deformable elastic bodies. Numerical results show the deformation of sand and tire, the stress (strain) distribution in sand, tire, and along the interface between them for different thickness of the membranes and hub. The effect of membrane thickness on the contact pressure between tire and sand is explored and it reveals that the tire with thickness t = 0.2mm for inner and outer membranes is not acceptable in terms of the elastic deformation of tire and contact pressure profile and the tire with thickness t = 1.0mm gives us best contact pressure profile.