Title: Nonlinear analysis of pneumatic radial tyres via piece-wise Rayleigh-Ritz technique

Authors: L. Jia, J. Zhang, Y. Xu

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 2555 Engineering Building, MI 48824, USA. ' Institute of Automotive Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, PR China. ' Institute of Automotive Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200030, PR China

Abstract: Based on the Sanders thin shell theory and Reddy|s higher-order shear deformation shell theory, a general refined shell theory is developed in this paper for the analysis of stresses and deformations of pneumatic radial tyres of composite construction. For easy and efficient simulation of the tyre, a piece-wise Rayleigh-Ritz technique is proposed and applied to get a numerical solution to the nonlinear structural problem. Bezier polynomials are used to approximate both the geometry of the free surface of reference and displacement fields of the tyres. Stress distributions and deformations of the tyres subjected to uniform inflation pressure are computed and discussed for details. From a comparison of the present results by the piece-wise Rayleigh-Ritz approach with the numerical predictions by 3D finite element method, it has been shown that the present semi-analytical solution procedure is accurate and applicable to the much complicated time-consuming nonlinear analysis for high quality tyre.

Keywords: pneumatic tyres; tyre deformation; tyre stresses; refined shell theory; piece-wise Rayleigh-Ritz procedure; Bezier polynomials; composite tyres; tyre simulation; stress distributions.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVD.2004.005242

International Journal of Vehicle Design, 2004 Vol.35 No.4, pp.317 - 330

Published online: 15 Sep 2004 *

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