OPTIMIZATION OF A TIRE TRACTION MODEL FOR ANTILOCK BRAKE SYSTEM SIMULATIONS

The cost effective design of antilock brake systems for automobiles re quires the use of computer aided design and analysis techniques, as we ll as traditional in-vehicle testing. An important consideration in th e simulation of the vehicle and brake dynamics is the generation of th e shear forces and aligning torques at the tire/road interface. Freque ntly, experimental tire data gathered over a limited number of road su rfaces is extrapolated to test antilock brake systems on a variety of roads. However, this approach may lead to problems in correlating the simulated system performance with actual vehicle tests. in this study, nonlinear programming strategies are applied to an analytical tire mo del to facilitate the selection of system variables. The formulation o f an optimization problem to determine these variables permits the gen eration of shear forces which correspond fairly well with the empirica l data. Simulation results are presented and discussed for five road s urfaces to indicate the overall performance of this technique.