Influence of Temperature on Tire-Pavement Friction-1: Laboratory Tests and Finite Element Modeling

The temperature development in tire-pavement contact region results in a complex relationship between temperature and friction. Tire rubber hysteresis on a road is considered to play an important role in countering skidding for a vehicle travelling at high speed. Past studies showed that the contribution from hysteresis component in comparison to adhesion has a larger influence on friction measurements. Variation in the tire temperature may result in unreliable interpretation of friction data particularly with continuous friction measuring equipment. Ever increasing need of driver safety poses challenges to the highway authorities to evaluate pavement conditions even more precisely. The present paper aims to develop a finite element model capable of assessing the effect of temperature on hysteric friction over a scan of real textured pavement surface. A dynamic analysis of tire rolling at any defined slip ratio, over a textured pavement surface and subsequent development of tire temperature would require a large computational time even for a powerful computer. Thus a new methodology using sequential analysis of static (for smooth surface) to dynamic (for slipping over rough surface) followed by a staggered temperature-analysis is developed. In this methodology, using the laboratory test data, a thermo-mechanical coupling model was developed to calculate the progressive development of temperature and its effect on the hysteretic friction. It was observed that the hysteretic friction of tire rubber decreases with increase in temperature.