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One important part of the vehicle design process is suspension design and tuning. This is typically performed by design engineers, experienced expert evaluators, and assistance from vehicle dynamics engineers and their computer simulation tools. Automotive suspensions have two primary functions: passenger and cargo isolation and vehicle control. Suspension design, kinematics, compliance, and damping, play a key role in those primary functions and impact a vehicles ride, handling, steering, and braking dynamics. The development and tuning of a vehicle kinematics, compliance, and damping characteristic is done by expert evaluators who perform a variety of on road evaluations under different loading configurations and on a variety of road surfaces. This “tuning” is done with a focus on meeting certain target characteristics for ride, handling, and steering One part of this process is the development and tuning of the damping characteristics of the shock absorbers.

It is well known that tire force and moment properties are affected by numerous design variables such as tire size, type, compounding, and construction. It is also true that environmental conditions such as rain, snow, or road surface type can alter the cornering capacity of a tire. In this study, specific environmental parameters related to water on the roadway are varied to study the effects on the force and moment properties of modern radial tires. The parameters under study included translational velocity and water depth during standard sweep testing at two different vertical loads. The force and moment characteristics of seven different tires were tested at the Calspan Tire Research Facility in Buffalo, New York. The slip angle sweep tests were conducted on the Flat Trac tire machine at various belt speeds, normal loads, and water depths.