Tires

Modern automobile, aircraft, and off-road tires are highly engineered products that need to be optimized for rolling resistance, handling, comfort, noise, durability, and wear. Shorter design cycles provide a competitive edge, and accurate simulation is the key to eliminating expensive redesign cycles and minimizing prototype testing. However, tires pose formidable simulation challenges due to the highly non-linear rubber compounds, reinforcements, complex tread geometries, contact, large deformations, and sophisticated loading conditions. It is imperative that your simulation platform of choice can accommodate these complexities efficiently and robustly without compromising the accuracy of results.

SIMULIA provides an exclusive virtual testing ground for tires using realistic simulation solutions—such as our Abaqus Unified FEA product suite, Multiphysics, simulation automation and optimization capabilities, and SLM products—that address a multitude of engineering challenges. Modeling paradigms and solution techniques tailored for tires make it easy to simulate physical behavior accurately. These tire-specific capabilities are paired with efficient parallel solvers to significantly reduce the turnaround time. We offer a streamlined approach where simulation progresses in stages. Each loading stage examines an important design load, while also serving to provide the base state for the next loading stage.

A typical simulation sequence starts with rim-mounting and inflation. This is followed by a footprint loading stage with vehicle load contributions. A steady state rolling simulation follows and utilizes a mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian framework that reduces the turnaround time by an order of magnitude compared to traditional Lagrangian methodology. Different rolling conditions like braking, acceleration, cornering, and camber are analyzed, and results provide insight into rolling resistance, handling, and tread wear. They may also be used to perform a coupled structural-acoustic analysis to predict vehicle comfort and exterior noise. Transient rolling analysis simulating the impact of the tire against an obstacle is carried out following the steady state rolling analysis, providing insight into durability.

SIMULIA realistic simulation solutions provide specialized functionality to simulate all of this and more. From this foundation, SIMULIA has become the clear market leader in tire simulation software.

Solution Capabilities

• Comprehensive modeling of rubber behavior including viscoelasticity and Mullins effect
• Tire lift equation to capture the variation in angle and spacing of the reinforcement
• Symmetric model generation and results transfer (convert 2-D tire cross-sections to full 3-D tire models)
• Mixed Eulerian-Lagrangian scheme for steady state rolling (braking, slip angles)
• Transient Rolling with Abaqus Unified FEA (impact)
• Distributed computing for faster turnaround
• Treadwear
• Coupled structural-acoustics for comfort and exterior noise prediction
• Simulation process automation
• Design optimization