AN EFFICIENT 3-DIMENSIONAL TIRE MODEL FOR VEHICLE DYNAMICS SIMULATIONS

For vehicle dynamics simulations, tire models are lacking that can acc urately predict spindle loads resulting from durability road events, s uch as curb impact or chuckhole impact, and for off-road scenarios. In this paper, an efficient three-dimensional tire model is presented fo r use in simulating such events. The model is based upon a precomputed table that characterizes the force-deflection behavior of the tire si dewall, which is coupled to standard shell elements to model the tire tread, Comparisons are given between computed and experimental results for several different loading cases that demonstrate the effectivenes s of the proposed model.