Advanced tire tread simulation through adaptive isogeometric analysis

Tire design significantly impacts automobile fuel efficiency and pollution. For electric vehicles, this impact is even greater. To create more optimized, safe, and competitive designs, tire companies are increasingly turning to virtual tire development via engineering simulation software. However, using finite element analysis to verify tire performance requires niche meshing skills that tire experts must acquire separately from their core competence. Even with these difficult-to-acquire meshing skills it can take days or even weeks to create the mesh, if they are even able to create the mesh without removing critical details. Tire industry leaders have identified these barriers to accessible, accurate simulation as key blockers preventing them from optimizing tire tread designs for modern automotive and electric vehicles uses. Isogeometric analysis is a new approach to engineering simulation that can provide highly accurate, near-real-time predictions of the behavior of complex shapes such as next-generation tire treads. This project will add capability to an existing isogeometric analysis software to specifically handle the particular demands and requirements of advanced tire construction and tire tread designs. Phase I of this project had four goals: validate the utility of a selected DOE-funded library for this application, integrate with an industry-standard material modeling library, develop appropriate numerical methods to enable isogeometric methods to be applied to advanced rubber simulations, and validate the application of advanced isogeometric methods to tire simulations. The first goal was achieved as part of a separate effort. In Phase I of this project, preparations were made to integrate the DOE-funded library and we integrated with the tire industry-standard commercial material modeling library. Phase I produced a successful proof of concept that proved the feasibility of an isogeometric approach for this application. In Phase II, the prototype software developed in Phase I will be integrated with the DOEfunded code to improve and develop the software from proof-of-concept to a usable commercial software package. By the end of Phase II, a code will be released that allows tire engineers to get highly accurate predictions of tire rolling resistance coefficients with near immediacy after a new tire construction or tread design is proposed. Other industries are also developing product designs that are too intricate for existing simulation software. For example, aerospace, defense, automotive, 3D printing, and other industries have expressed interest in the ability of isogeometric analysis to expand the range of products that can be simulated with finite element analysis. This project also contributes advances toward simulation software capable of meeting this general demand.