Truck tyre wear assessment and prediction

Tyre wear is a complex phenomenon. It depends non-linearly on numerous parameters, like tyre compound and design, vehicle type and usage, road conditions and road surface characteristics, environmental conditions (e.g., temperature) and many others. Yet, tyre wear has many economic and ecological implications. The possibility to predict tyre wear is therefore of major importance to tyre manufacturers, fleet owners and governments. Analogous observations can be made for road wear prediction due to the high road maintenance costs and traffic safety implications. Tyre and road wear are strongly related; the energy that wears the road is the energy that wears the tyre. There is therefore much to gain from an integrated approach to studying the mechanisms behind both wear phenomena. Based on these observations, in 2000 we started the three-year 5th framework EU project TROWS (Tyre and ROad Wear and Slip assessment). The results include tools to analyse tyre wear and road polishing. These will be combined in a suitable wear prediction environment. This paper focuses on the followed methods and results sofar of TROWS for truck tyre wear. Several types of tests were performed to obtain insight in the mechanisms behind the truck tyre wear phenomenon. These include material tests on tyre compounds, carousel tests with truck tyres, and tests with an articulated MAN truck on a public road course in Italy. Truck tyre wear mechanisms are presented and explained in relation to results from the performed tyre wear tests. Some modelling activities are discussed, as well as the wear prediction environment (Prolinx) that was developed to integrate the vast amount of test and modelling results from partners working at different locations with different tools. The relation between tyre and road wear is briefly touched upon. A discussion on the remaining challenges in predicting tyre wear concludes this paper