Identification of Tire Model Parameters Through Full Vehicle Experimental Tests

Individual tire model parameters are traditionally derived from expensive component indoor laboratory tests as a result of an identification procedure minimizing the error with respect to force and slip measurements. These parameters are then transferred to vehicle models used at a design stage to simulate the vehicle handling behavior. A methodology aimed at identifying the Magic Formula-Tyre (MF-Tyre) model coefficients of each individual tire for pure cornering conditions based only on the measurements carried out on board vehicle (vehicle sideslip angle, yaw rate, lateral acceleration, speed and steer angle) during standard handling maneuvers (step-steers) is instead presented in this paper. The resulting tire model thus includes vertical load dependency and implicitly compensates for suspension geometry and compliance (i.e., scaling factors are included into the identified MF coefficients). The global number of tests (indoor and outdoor) needed for characterizing a tire for handling simulation purposes can thus be reduced. The proposed methodology is made in three subsequent steps. During the first phase, the average MF coefficients of the tires of an axle and the relaxation lengths are identified through an extended Kalman filter. Then the vertical loads and the slip angles at each tire are estimated. The results of these two steps are used as inputs to the last phase, where, the MF-Tyre model coefficients for each individual tire are identified through a constrained minimization approach. Results of the identification procedure have been compared with experimental data collected on a sport vehicle equipped with different tires for the front and the rear axles and instrumented with dynamometric hubs for tire contact forces measurement. Thus, a direct matching between the measured and the estimated contact forces could be performed, showing a successful tire model identification. As a further verification of the obtained results, the identified tire model has also been compared with laboratory tests on the same tire. A good agreement has been observed for the rear tire where suspension compliance is negligible, while front tire data are comparable only after including a suspension compliance compensation term into the identification procedure.