3-D Nonlinear FEA Of Radial Tires Under Inflation And Contacting Load

According to the actual structure, comprehensively considering geometric non-linearity, nonlinear rubber constitutive equations, anisotropy of cord-rubber composite and nonlinear contact, based on ANSYS FEA software, the layer element, solid element and general contact element are adopted to simulate the composite structure of radial tire. And a 3-D finite element model of radial tire (Model 205/65R15 94H) is established successfully in this thesis.Owing to the isomery in tire material properties and tire structures, it is both economical and exact to model the tire by application of layer elements and solid elements. On the other hand, because of the non-linear properties of the tire materials and non-linear properties of the tire-ground contact, every loading step should be divided into several sub-steps to ensure the calculation precision and the convergence rate. Furthermore, stresses, strains and displacements of different positions on the tire and contact area and the contact pressure distribution of the tire are also analyzed under contacting loads respectively.When a radial tire is inflated and contacted with the road surface, the tire has different symmetrical structures, therefore two kinds of model, i.e. sector model and half model are applied to simulate different situations.On the basis of actual application conditions and above nonlinear FEA, the relationships among mechanics properties of a tire and its structures are deeply researched, and the entire deformations, stresses, strains under inflation and contacting with road surface conditions are analyzed. The results will be helpful as references for the tire design and improvements.