A finite element modeling technique is employed in this paper to predict the groove wander of longitudinal tread grooved tires. In generally, groove wander is the lateral force acting on a vehicle’s wheel resulting from the combination of rain grooves. If the lateral force of tire is generated by groove wander, unexpected lateral motion of vehicle will happen and it makes drivers uncomfortable. This paper describes the effect of groove wander according to the shape condition of tire tread groove and highway groove using the finite element analysis based on a static loading or a steady-state rolling assumption. The road groove can be located anywhere relative to the longitudinal tread groove. Therefore, the lateral force of the tire is changing depending on the location of the groove road. The numerical results for groove wander prediction of the longitudinal tread grooved tires are compared with the subjective evaluation. It is found that the waveform for the tire with varying grooved road position has a peak-to-peak lateral force in order to estimate the rating of groove wander. The effect of the road groove width and the pitch length on the peak-to-peak lateral force of tire is discussed. It is found that the prediction of FEA-based groove wander model using finite element analysis will be useful for the reliability design of the tire tread pattern design.
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