Over the last few decades, finite element analysis has become an integral part of the overall tire design process. Engineers need to perform a number of different simulations to evaluate new designs and study the effect of proposed design changes. However, tires pose formidable simulation challenges due to the presence of highly non-linear rubber compounds, embedded reinforcements, complex tread geometries, rolling contact and large deformations. Accurate simulation requires careful consideration of these factors, resulting in extensive turnaround time, often times prolonging the design cycle. Therefore, it is extremely critical to explore means to reduce the turnaround time while producing reliable results.

Compute clusters have recently become a cost effective means to perform high performance computing (HPC). Distributed memory parallel (DMP) solvers designed to take advantage of compute clusters have become increasingly popular. In this paper, we examine the use of HPC for various tire simulations and demonstrate how it can significantly reduce simulation turnaround time. Abaqus/Standard is used for routine tire simulaitons like footprint and steady state rolling. Abaqus/Explicit is used for transient rolling and hydroplaning simulations. The run times and scaling data corresponding to models of various sizes and complexity are presented.

Hydroplaning, Snow-Tire Interaction, and Mud-Tire Interaction are becoming of increasing interest to Tire industry.  With the availability of High Performance Computing, these analysis can now be routine and included as part of tire workflows.

These interactions are either Fluid-Structure Interaction type (i.e., Hydroplaning), or involve complex material behavior undergoing large permanent deformation in both volumetric and shear (i.e., snow or mud).  The Eulerian framework where the mesh is stationary and the material moves within mesh is more effective than the traditional lagrangian framework for these cases.  Abaqus’ Coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian (CEL) technology can model the contact of the lagrangian tire with the eulerian material (water, snow or mud) in the General Contact framework of Abaqus/Explicit.  A general overview of this capability along with general material models will be presented to demonstrate the application of CEL within Abaqus.

A majority of tire makers make an effort to improve irregular wear that has a strong influence on tire performance. The standardized indoor wear tests or FE simulations are representative methods used to predict the tread wear performance. Especially, tread wear prediction method is developed using FE simulation that was more effective to reduce tire development time and cost.

In the previous paper^[1], tire tread wear was predicted by explicit FEM and compared with the indoor wear test results under a set of actual driving conditions. For the FE simulation, pressure dependent friction model, the selected wear rate equation and the simplified driving conditions were applied and the simulated wear results for the patterned tires were compared with the indoor wear test results. 

For the enhancement of tread wear prediction, pressure and slip dependent friction model is adopted in this study. And, 205/55R16 tire is used to determine the most appropriate friction model and wear rate equation. The selected friction model and wear equation is verified through alterations of size, loading severity, pattern, as well as velocity. In order to enhance the wear simulation efficiency, simplified 9 conditions that consider the driving condition frequency and weighting factors are selected to predict the indoor wear tests. As a result, the simulated wear shows good agreement with the indoor wear test.