A Correlation Between Rolling Tire Contact Friction Energy and Indoor Tread Wear

Abstract

Abstract In an effort to reduce tire development time and cost, tire companies have developed accelerated indoor wear test technology and are developing modeling methods to conduct tire wear evaluations in a “virtual” sense. Much automotive and tire industry expertise has been devoted to establishing a relationship between outdoor and indoor wear test results. The development of modeling techniques has focused on the prediction of friction energy in rolling tire contact. A successful “virtual” wear test based on this technique requires an objective link between rolling tire contact friction energy and tire wear. In this paper, a correlation equation using experimentally measured rolling contact friction energy and indoor tread wear is obtained for a specific passenger tire construction. Test equipment and methods for rolling contact measurements and indoor tread wear are described. Laser measurements of tread loss are compared to friction energy results for combined straight-ahead rolling and cornering conditions to establish a reasonable correlation between contact friction energy and tire tread loss on a global and local scale across loading conditions representative of a realistic outdoor wear course.