Influence of material damping on the prediction of road texture and tread pattern related rolling resistance

A comprehensive analysis of the influence of material damping properties on the prediction of the road texture and tread pattern contribution to rolling resistance is presented. It is well known that rolling resistance is directly related to the tyre material damping and increases as the internal damping in the tyre increases. However, it is unclear what the accuracy of the material damping should be when the goal is to predict the (relative) effect of road texture and tread pattern on rolling resistance. Recently a FEM-based modeling approach to predict the road texture influence on the rolling resistance of pneumatic tyres has been proposed. In this approach the total rolling resistance is approximated as the sum of two components: smooth road rolling resistance and road texture induced rolling resistance. In the present paper the influence of material damping on both components of the predicted rolling resistance will be studied. The steady-state rolling resistance is obtained using the ’Steady State Transport’ algorithm in the software package Abaqus. The viscoelastic rubber properties are modeled using a second order Prony series and the coefficients are varied to represent a realistic range for tyres. The road texture induced rolling resistance depends on both the belt and tread damping. The belt damping is modeled as Rayleigh damping and the tread damping as frequency independent (viscous) damping. Measured road texture profiles are used as an input to study the combined influence of road texture and tread pattern on rolling resistance.