A comparison between Finite Element and Waveguide Finite Element Methods for the simulation of tire/road interaction

Due to increasing road utilization and tightening regulations, an increasing effort is made by the tire and automotive industries for accurate modeling of tire/road noise. It is well known that finite element (FE) based methods describing the vibration response of a rolling tire are computationally expensive while analytical models do not offer the necessary accuracy in the structural description of the tire. The recently proposed waveguide finite element (WFE) method combines the detailed description of a discretized tire cross section with a computationally efficient wave approach in the circumferential direction. The method has been successfully applied for tire dynamics and rolling noise simulations. An important aspect for the modeling of rolling noise is an accurate description of the road induced excitation. Both the high frequency vibration field and the lower frequency or quasi-static contact area need to be accurately captured. In this work we compare FE and WFE models of a tire in terms of traditional NVH properties such as mobility and modal frequencies, and in term of contact behavior such as footprint shape and structural stiffness. This way the potential of the WFE method for the modeling of both the excitation and the response of a rolling tire is critically examined