31st Annual Meeting and Conference on Tire Science and Technology

The International Exposition (I-X) Center: Cleveland, OH, USA

Wednesday, September 19, 2012: 8:30 AM
Grand Ballroom (The International Exposition (I-X) Center)
Rahul Ahlawat, Ph.D., (Mechanical, Engineering) and Michael Smith, Ph.D., (Mechanical, Engineering), A&D Technology, Ann Arbor, MI
Measurement of accurate tire footprint forces is essential to fundamentally understand tire behavior. However, bulk of the existing literature does not present experimental data for tire shear forces, which are essential for completely understanding vehicle-tire-road interactions as well as predicting tire-tread wear. This paper presents experimental results obtained by embedding Force Matrix Sensor (FMS) in the road for obtaining tire footprint forces. As the instrumented vehicle drives over this sensor, high resolution contact patch forces in the three orthogonal directions are recorded synchronized with the vehicle data such as forces acting at the wheel hub. Details of experimental procedures, data analysis and data validation are presented along with some results for high speed testing. It is demonstrated that this experimental setup can serve as a valuable tool for testing tires on vehicles and can aid in better design and development.