Numerical Investigation Of Hydroplaning Characteristics Of Patterned Tire

In this thesis, the finite element model of automobile radial tire 175/65R14 is created using LS-DYNA software. In the finite element models, tire tread with incompressible Mooney-Rivlin material model, layers of the tire main part are using elasitc material model, the fiber-reinforced rubber parts are modeled using multi-layered composite shell elements. The influences of the tire geometric nonlinearity and the nonlinearity boundary conditions from the tire-pavement contact are taken into account, the nonlinear contact between the rim and bead is neglected, instead of using surface which locates in the outer surface of bead solid elements, two rims are applied to inside compulsory displacement, in order to simulate the installation process of rims. Instead of the tire moving on the fixed road, the longitudinal velocity is applied to the road and water, the friction between tire and road surface makes the tire rotate at the fixed position in order to reduce the number of fluid elements and improve the computational efficiency. To deal with the problem of structure and fluid interaction, the coupling surface should be composed of the tire outer surface.Firstly, verified radial stiffness of the tire model and compared with experimental and achieved a good agreement, which verified the validity of the composite material model of the tire.Secondly, tire skidding on wet pavement was simulated, the whole process of hydroplaning phenomenon was analysised. The relationship between the contact force and water speed was obtained when tire rotated on the wet road. In this basis, arrived at the hydroplaning velocity.Lastly, the hydroplaning performance of tires with complex pattern, longitudinal groove pattern and smooth pattern was compared. The results showed that the hydroplaning performance of longitudinal groove pattern tire was better than the smooth pattern tire while worse than the complex pattern tire. Because complex pattern tire existed transverse grooves, while smooth pattern tire lacked longitudinal grooves.