Structural and thermal investigations of rolling tires in a flat road

Abstract

Rubber is an essential component of a pneumatic tire. In general, the tire, or the rubber part, is heated by the hysteresis effects caused by the deformation of the rubber part during the operation. Besides, the tire temperature depends on many factors, such as inflation pressure, vehicle loading, car speed, road tire, environment condition, and tire geometry, etc. This study focuses on the finite element approach to compute by simulating the temperature distributions of a steady-state rolling tire. For simplicity, the tire is assumed to be composed of rubber, body-ply, wire, and rim only. The nonlinear mechanical behavior of the rubber is characterized by a Mooney–Rivlin model, while the other parts are assumed to be a linear elastic material. The coupled effects of the inflation pressure and vehicle loading are investigated. Hysteresis energy loss is used as a bridge to link the strain energy density to the heat source in rolling tires. The steady-state thermal analysis may obtain the temperature distribution of rolling tires. On the other hand, an efficient computational process is being introduced to decrease the time for coupled 3D dynamic rolling simulation of the tire. The simulation results show that loading is the main factor in determining the temperature field