Numerical Prediction of Car Tire Wear

Due to their many economic and ecological implications, the possibility to predict tire wear is of major importance to tire manufacturers, fleet owners and governments. Based on these observations, in 2000, a three-year project named TROWS (Tire and Road Wear and Slip assessment was started. One of the TROWS objectives is to provide a tool able to numerically predict tire global wear as well as to qualitatively determine the wear distribution. The proposed methodology combines a mathematical model of the tire with an experimentally determined local friction and wear law. Thus, tire abrasion due to each single maneuver can be determined. Full-scale experimental tests were carried out with two Peugeot 406 cars on a public road course in Italy. Each car was equipped with a different set of tires: one car was equipped with four all-season tires (from now on called A tires) and the other car was equipped with four winter tires (from now on called B tires). Both sets of tires had a 195/65 R15 size. The collected data was used to validate the model. The methodology proved to give qualitatively good tire wear predictions.