Contact stiffness considerations when simulating tyre/road noise
Journal article, 2017

Tyre/road simulation tools that can capture tyre vibrations, rolling resistance and noise generation are useful for understanding the complex processes that are involved and thereby promoting further development and optimisation. The most detailed tyre/road contact models use a spatial discretisation of the contact and assume an interfacial stiffness to account for the small-scale roughness within the elements. This interfacial stiffness has been found to have a significant impact on the simulated noise emissions but no thorough investigations of this sensitivity have been conducted. Three mechanisms are thought to be involved: The horn effect, the modal composition of the vibrational field of the tyre and the contact forces exciting the tyre vibrations. This study used a numerical tyre/road noise simulation tool based on physical relations to investigate these aspects. The model includes a detailed time-domain contact model with linear or non-linear contact springs that accounts for the effect of local tread deformation on smaller length scales. Results confirm that an increase in contact spring stiffness causes a significant increase of the simulated tyre/road noise. This is primarily caused by a corresponding increase in the contact forces, resulting in larger vibrational amplitudes. The horn effect and the modal composition are relatively unaffected and have minor effects on the radiated noise. A more detailed non-linear contact spring formulation with lower stiffness at small indentations results in a reduced high-frequency content in the contact forces and the simulated noise.

Contact stiffness

Tyre/road noise

Tyre/road noise modelling

Author

Julia Winroth

Chalmers, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Applied Acoustics

Wolfgang Kropp

Chalmers, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Applied Acoustics

Carsten Hoever

Chalmers, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Applied Acoustics

Patrik Höstmad

Chalmers, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Applied Acoustics

Journal of Sound and Vibration

0022-460X (ISSN) 1095-8568 (eISSN)

Vol. 409 274-286

Subject Categories

Mechanical Engineering

Tribology

Vehicle Engineering

Other Civil Engineering

Fluid Mechanics and Acoustics

Areas of Advance

Transport

Building Futures (2010-2018)

DOI

10.1016/j.jsv.2017.07.044

More information

Latest update

11/21/2018