Tech Tip: Comparing Tires - OptimumG - Vehicle …

1 tech Tip: Comparing TiresComparing Tire DataComparing the force and moment characteristics oftwo sets of tire data is an important task. It is im-portant for tire manufacturers and also for vehicledynamicists. Differences between the sets of datacould include: Constructions Compounds Rim widths Inflation pressure Tires made in different batches Any other change that might make a differenceSimple comparisons usually focus on directly com-paring the force and moment response of the like "which tire can generate more lat-eral force" fall into this category.

2 This type of com-parison is useful, but does not give you the wholepicture. Comparing more complex quantities whichcannot be directly measured, but are rather calcu-lated, can give you a better understanding of this tech tip, we re going to compare two Tires we ll simply call them Tire A and Tire B. Thedata we ll use was collected at Calspan by the FSAETTC (Tire Testing Consortium). We will start bydoing the simple comparisons, then move on to morecomplex can start the comparison process by creatinga new project in OptimumT.

3 We will create twoTireItems. These are the way that you organize a projectin OptimumT. TheTire Itemallows you to store in-formation about the tire size, construction, manufac-turing batch, test conditions and many other piecesof information. Any number of data files and tiremodels can be associated with eachTire Item. Sincewe re Comparing two Tires , we re going to create twoTire Items. We re going to import cornering datacollected for each tire using the Import Wizard. Thiswizard allows us easily specify the format of the file(see Figure 1).

4 Figure 1:Import WizardOnce we have imported the raw data, we caneasily view it. A lateral force versus slip angle graphfor Tire A is shown in Figure 2:Raw tire data (Tire A)It is often useful to fit a tire model to the data even if we won t do any simulation work. Compar-ing two tire models instead of directly Comparing theraw data allows us to more easily see differences themodel removes the experimental noise and test hys-teresis inherent in the raw data. Fitting a tire modelis a relatively simple task using OptimumT s ModelFitting Tool.

5 For this example, we will fit PacejkaMagic Formula 96 models for both Tires . For moreinformation about this, please see the Tip: Comparing TiresFigure 3:Lateral Force vs. Slip Angle for two tiresat three vertical loads. The curves are colored ac-cording to both the tire used and also the ComparisonsWhen looking at the lateral tire characteristics, thesimplest comparison that we can do is overlaying thelateral force versus slip angle plots for the two Tires (Figure 3). To aid in understanding a graph, Op-timumT has powerful coloring functionality.

6 In thiscase, we have colored the two models differently. Thedifferent vertical loads displayed are also colored dif-ferently to allow easy this graph, we see right away that Tire B(blue) has much more grip than Tire A (yellow). Italso appears that at low loads, Tire A has a higherinitial cornering stiffness than Tire B, and this trendis reversed at high loads. We will quantify this laterwhen we plot the instantaneous cornering , it appears that Tire A reaches its max-imum lateral force at a lower slip angle.

7 We willquantify this later as Advanced ComparisonsWhile looking at the simple force and moment char-acteristics of two Tires is useful, the best use of Op-timumT is to look at more complex , we noticed apparent differences in theFigure 4:Instantaneous cornering stiffness versusslip angle for two Tires at three stiffness of the two Tires . We can use Opti-mumT to plot the Instantaneous Cornering Stiffnessversus slip angle (Figure 4). This is the instanta-neous slope of the lateral force versus slip angle curve( Fy/ ).

8 By looking at this graph, we see that ourinitial observation was correct. At the lightest loaddisplayed, Tire A has a cornering stiffness ( Fy/ when = 0) of492N/owhile Tire B has corneringstiffness of451N/o. At the highest load, this trend isreversed. At the highest load, Tire B has a corneringstiffness that is over 50% greater than that of we can gain from this graph goes far be-yond the initial cornering stiffness, though. We seethat at low loads, the instantaneous cornering stiff-ness of Tire A falls off a lot more sharply.

9 This meansthat at low loads, Tire A will be more controllablebut less responsive. The shape of the instantaneouscornering stiffness curves is similar for the two tiresat the two highest can also look at the cornering stiffness coef-ficient. This is defined as the cornering stiffness (atzero slip angle) divided by the vertical load. We plotthis against normal load for three different camberangles in Figure 5. We can see from this graph thatTire B s cornering stiffness is roughly proportional tothe vertical load.

10 Tire A s cornering stiffness varies2 tech Tip: Comparing TiresFigure 5:Cornering stiffness coefficientless than linearily with load. In simple terms, if theload is doubled, the cornering stiffness of Tire B willroughly doubled, while Tire A s cornering stiffnesswill not increase nearly as much. This can give usinsight about how the tire will affect the handing ofa difference that we saw when looking atthe Figure 3 was that Tire A appeared to reach itspeak lateral force at a lower slip angle. We can useOptimumT to quantify this.