Representative Evaluation of Topographical Characteristics of Road Surface for Tire Contact Force Analysis

Most automobile tire companies have not yet considered the geometric information of a road at the design stage of a tire because the topographical characterization of a road surface is very difficult owing to its vastness and randomness. A road surface shows variable surface roughness values according to magnification, and thus, the contact force between the road and tire significantly fluctuates with respect to the scale. In this study, we make an attempt to define a representative value for surface topographical information at multi-scale levels. To represent surface topography, we use a statistical method called power spectral density (PSD). We use the fast Fourier transform (FFT) and PSD to analyze the height profiles of a random surface. The FFT and PSD of a surface help in obtaining a fractal dimension, which is a representative value of surface topography at all length scales. We develop three surfaces with different fractal dimensions. We use finite element analysis (FEA) to observe the contact forces between a tire and the road surfaces with three different fractal dimensions. The results from FEA reveal that an increase in the fractal dimension decreases the contact length between the tire and road surfaces. On the contrary, the average contact force increases. This result indicates that designing and manufacturing a tire considering the fractal dimension of a road makes safe driving possible, owing to the improvement in service life and braking performance of the tire.

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