Developement of a Stress Evaluation System of Viscoelastic Wheel-Tire under Rolling Contact Load

Abstract

This paper describes the first step approach to the final goal, that is the quantitative evaluation of viscoelastic strain energy loss and heat generation in vehicle tire made of laminated rubber like materials under compression contact load. The procedure adopted to solve a plane strain problem of laminated viscoelastic structure under compression contact is as follows; 1) The experiments on tri-layer laminated block models made of viscoelastic materials are conducted. Viscoelastic stress analysis under quasi-static load is performed by the white light photoelastic technique in 2D cases, and in 3D by the white light scattered photo-elastic technique. 2) An experiment system is developed for the purpose of stress evaluation of the laminated viscoelastic structure tire model under rolling contact load. 3) A laminated tire model under rolling contact is investigated utilizing the same technique mentioned above.