Thermo-mechanical coupling analysis of transient temperature and rolling resistance for solid rubber tire: Numerical simulation and experimental verification

Abstract The achievement of low rolling resistance and long-term durability of tires on various vehicles is of great challenge. Tire performances heavily depend on rubber properties; however, the thermo-mechanical coupling characteristics of rubber composites are complicated rendering the design of high-performance tires time-consuming and costly. In our research, the transient temperature and rolling resistance of a solid rubber tire were performed based on the thermo-mechanical coupling approach and nonlinear viscoelastic theory by using finite element method. Particular attention was paid to the strain cycles as the tire rolling on the road presents non-sinusoidal deformation. First, a static three dimensional tire-road contact analysis was conducted to obtain the principal strain cycles. Second, the 100th-order Fourier sine series was used to approximate the strain amplitude. Third, the heat generation rate proportional to the product of the loss modulus and the square of strain amplitude was calculated. The loss modulus was updated as a function of strain amplitude, temperature and frequency. Loss modulus softening effect was also considered. A practical method was proposed to compute the rolling resistance and transient temperature distributions by establishing a 2-D axisymmetric model. A rubber rolling tester was used to verify the numerical results. The comparison between numerical data and test data reveals that the proposed analytical method is a reliable approach to predict rolling resistance and transient temperature distribution for rubber tires. At last, the dependence of rolling resistance and heat build-up on thermal conductivity and loss factor were investigated by the parametric numerical experiments.