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The development of intelligent tire technology from concept to application covers multi-disciplinary fields. During the course of development, the computational method can play a significant role in understanding tire behavior, assisting in the design of the intelligent tire prototype system and in developing tire parameters estimation algorithm, etc. In this paper, a finite element tire model was adopted for developing a strain-based intelligent tire system. The finite element tire model was created considering the tire's composite structure and nonlinear properties of its constituent materials, and the FE model was also validated by physical tests. The FE model is used to study tire strain characteristics by steady state simulation for straight line rolling, traction and braking, as well as cornering. Tire loading conditions were estimated by feature extraction and data fitting.

The increasing demand for ground vehicles safety has led to the requirements for effective and accurate vehicle active safety systems, such as Anti-lock Braking System (ABS) and Traction Control System (TCS). As the only link between vehicle and road, the tire is in a very privileged position in a vehicle to acquire vital information which could be used to improve vehicle dynamics control systems. Hence the requirement for an “intelligent tire” that incorporates a system that is able to sense the tire and road conditions, and then interact with the vehicle dynamics control system to optimize the vehicle performance as well as provide warning information to the driver. In this paper, an experimental tire strain-based system is used to establish the proof of concept of an intelligent tire prototype. This experimental system comprises a data acquisition device and three rectangular rosette strain sensors, which can measure the tire surface dynamic strain in real time.

The use of accurate tire material properties is a major requirement for conducting a successful tire analysis using finite element method (FEM). Obtaining these material properties however poses a major challenge for tire modelers and researchers due to the complex nature of tire material and associated proprietary protections of constituent material properties by tire manufactures. In view of this limitation, a simple and effective procedure for generating tire materials data used in tire finite element analysis (FEA) is presented in this paper. All the tire test specimens were extracted from a tire product based on special considerations such as specimen dimension and shape, test standard, precondition of specimen and test condition for cords. The required material properties of tire rubber component, including hyperelasticity and viscoelasticity were obtained using simple uni-axial tension test.