Development of a Test Rig for Rapid Assessment of Tire-Vehicle System Integration

With continuing advances in new tire designs, there is a need for rapid assessment of the performance of these tires in a vehicle-integrated environment. This presentation will illustrate one such capability developed at the Clemson University-International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR). The test rig is a quarter-car set up built around a drum of a chassis dynamometer and it can accommodate different tires and suspensions. It includes provisions for evaluating different algorithms for active safety systems such as Anti-lock Braking Systems (ABS). It also has a Hardware-in-the-Loop simulation capability to virtually simulate sprung mass dynamics for different vehicles. The instrumentation set has the ability to measure dynamic slip of the tire ring, in addition to the standard wheel slip; a sensor suite to measure dynamic vibration signals such as vertical wheel hop motion and accelerations; braking-induced torque and force transmitted to the chassis; and sprung mass motion sensors. The presentation will include demonstrations of the test rig’s applications for evaluating the performance of two distinctly different tire designs in braking tests with and without ABS.