ANALYSIS OF GROUNDING CHARACTERISTICS AND STRAIN ENERGY OF RADIAL TIRES WITH RADIAL STIFFNESS¹⁾

A general tire testing machine is used for the performance tests of the radial tires with radial stiffness. Orthogonal tests are used to analyze the grounding characteristics of the tires under different tire pressures and vertical loads. The simulation software ABAQUS is used for a simulation to compare with the tests. The results show that the Mooney-Rivli model for the rubber material can be applied in certain cases. The radial stiffness is linearly related with the tire pressure. As the area increases, the area of the tread marks decreases significantly. The pressure on the contact surface is mainly concentrated on the shoulders and that on the tread crown is also increased. When the tire pressure is constant and the vertical load is increased gradually, the stress on the entire footprint is in a symmetrical. distribution, and the distribution of the stress on the imprint surface changes gradually from high on the inner part and low on the outer part to high on the outer part and low on the inner part. A mathematical model is built and the finite element software is used to analyze the strain energy of the tire at the same time. It is found that the tire is prone to a slight lateral displacement and deformation at the same time when the tire is loaded at a low tire pressure of 150KPa. At this time, it is easy to cause a hysteresis loss and cause a sharp increase in the strain energy.