Dong Woo Lee, Jong Kyu Kim, Sung Rae Kim, Kwon-Hee Lee*
The Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology, vol. 25, no. 1, pp.149-155, 2011

Abstract : The basic purpose of a tire is to enhance vehicle performances such as driving performance, rolling resistance, durability, ride comfort, noise, wear resistance, etc. by acting as a flexible cushion. To meet the demand for increased vehicle performances, the design method of a tire has advanced. This study proposes a structural design method for tire contour by considering both the tread contour and the sidewall contour, simultaneously. Existing studies of tire contour optimization have focused on the tread contour and the sidewall, separately. Durability, maneuverability and ride comfort are performances that are commonly investigated in tire contour design. Durability, maneuverability and ride comfort can be measured by the values of the strain energy density, tension and vertical stiffness, respectively. The optimization technique using a metamodel is introduced to maximize durability while satisfying the imposed constraints of tension and ride comfort. To achieve this, the responses defined in the optimization formulation are expressed mathematically in explicit form with respect to the design variables by using the kriging surrogate model, resulting in a simple optimization problem. Then, the simulated annealing algorithm is utilized to find the global optimum.

Keyword : Contour design; Kriging; Optimization; Simulated annealing