Paper Number 3.1
Design, Construction, and Testing
of a Portable Tire Test Rig
Brad Hopkins[1]
Derek Fox
Saied Taheri
Intelligent Transportation
Laboratory
Mechanical Engineering
Department
Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and
Email: bradhopkins@vt.edu
Email: foxd@vt.edu
Tire force and moment testing is a valuable
way of quantifying the performance of various tires. The data is also used by
many researchers for vehicle dynamic simulation studies as well as chassis
control system development. Although various studies have claimed correlation
between data from rolling-road type machines and road-testing trailers, the
claim only extends for on-road conditions. Many military vehicles as well as
agricultural vehicles operate in an environment which requires new levels of
tire test data. This paper will discuss
the design and testing of a portable trailer tire test rig. This rig was
conceived and constructed for use on- and off-road and is also fitted for
wet-road testing. The rig will be used to collect tire data on various tire
sizes both on and off-road at various road surfaces (grass, asphalt, concrete,
and gravel) speeds, pressures, loads, and slip angles. The data will be used to
develop a modified Pacejka Magic Formula Tire Model that can be used for
conducting simulation in both on and off-road conditions.