Skip to main content
ARS Home » Southeast Area » Auburn, Alabama » Soil Dynamics Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #286515
Title: Traction prediction of a smooth rigid wheel in soil using coupled eulerian-lagrangian analysis

Author
item VARGHESE, ANOOP - Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations
item TURNER, JOHN - Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations
item Way, Thomas - Tom
item JOHNSON, CLARENCE - Auburn University
item DORFI, HANS - Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations

Submitted to: Meeting Proceedings
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/15/2012
Publication Date: 5/15/2012
Citation: Varghese, A.G., Turner, J.L., Way, T.R., Johnson, C.E., Dorfi, H.R. 2012. Traction prediction of a smooth rigid wheel in soil using coupled eulerian-lagrangian analysis. Proceedings of the 2012 SIMULIA Community Conference, May 15-17, 2012, Providence, Rhode Island.

Interpretive Summary: Traction of a tire is important in propelling a vehicle. In analysis and design of tires and in improving our understanding of traction, accurate prediction of traction is important in reducing the time and resources required for developing tires and traction systems. On a rigid surface like a paved road, traction of a tire can be predicted using an appropriate tire-road friction model to simulate tire performance. Traction on a deformable surface like soil or snow is a more complex phenomenon. A computer simulation was developed to predict traction of a wheel rolling on soil. When a tire traffics soil, the downward vertical force of the tire on the soil causes mechanical stresses within the soil beneath the tire. Rigid wheels that have cylindrical peripheries are sometimes used in wheel-soil interaction experiments and simulations because they are simpler devices than flexible tires. A rigid wheel was run on a sandy loam and a clay loam with wheel travel reduction (slip) values of 11% and 23%. Measured and predicted traction force values correlated well with one another for both the sandy loam and clay loam soils. Comparison of the measured and predicted traction force shows that this approach is reasonable for predicting traction in soil. These results are expected to be useful to designers of tires, and tracks of tracked vehicles, and agricultural and other off-road vehicles.

Technical Abstract: Traction is an important performance requirement for a tire and is the force that propels a vehicle forward. Accurate traction prediction is important in reducing development cycle time and improving mechanistic understanding of tire traction performance. On a rigid surface like a paved road, traction can be predicted using an appropriate tire-road friction model in a simulation of tire performance. Traction on a deformable medium like soil or snow is a more complex phenomenon. Available traction on soil is the sum of friction at tire-soil interface and the amount of soil strength extracted by the tire to propel itself. Soil is a highly plastic material and flows like a liquid as the material approaches its shear strength. The Lagrangian formulation of balance laws cannot be used satisfactorily to simulate soil because of excessive soil deformation under even a small load. We present here an approach where the balance laws of continuum mechanics are solved in an Eulerian formulation in a subset of the analysis domain (e.g. soil) and in a Lagrangian formulation in the remainder of the domain (e.g. tire) thereby allowing very large deformations to occur in the soil. This approach has been implemented as a Coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian (CEL) technique in the ABAQUS/Explicit finite element analysis computer program. The CEL capability of ABAQUS/Explicit is used to predict traction during rolling of a rigid cylindrical wheel on soil. The soil medium is modeled using modified Drucker-Prager/Cap constitutive equations available in ABAQUS and the material properties are determined from soil data published in literature. The approach to modeling soil is validated by comparing predicted traction and stresses in soil beneath a wheel to traction test data of a rolling of rigid wheel available in literature. The rigid wheel was run on a sandy loam and a clay loam with wheel travel reduction (slip) values of 11% and 23%. Measured and predicted net traction values correlated well with one another for both soil types and the correlation was better for the sandy loam than for the clay loam soil. Comparison of measured and predicted traction force shows that this approach is reasonable for predicting traction in soil.