Identification of Agricultural Tyres' Handling Characteristics from Full Vehicle Experimental Tests

For passenger cars, individual tyre model parameters, used in vehicle models able to simulate vehicle handling behavior, are traditionally derived from expensive component indoor laboratory tests as a result of an identification procedure minimizing the error with respect to force and slip measurements. Indoor experiments on agricultural tyres are instead more challenging and thus generally not performed due to tyre size and applied forces. However, the knowledge of their handling characteristics is becoming more and more important since in the next few years, all agricultural vehicles are expected to run on ordinary asphalt roads at a speed of 80km/h. The present paper presents a methodology to identify agricultural tyres' handling characteristics based only on the measurements carried out on board vehicle (vehicle sideslip angle, yaw rate, lateral acceleration, speed and steer angle) during standard handling maneuvers (step-steers, J-turns, etc.), instead than during indoor tests. In particular, MF-Tyre model parameters (including vertical load and pressure dependency) are identified by the developed algorithm, which is based on a constrained minimization approach. The proposed identification procedure was applied to the data collected on an instrumented high-range agricultural vehicle during a series of handling maneuvers carried out at different inflation pressures. Copyright © 2014 SAE International.