Mechanism for the Reduction of Lateral Friction Capabilities of a Delaminated Tire
Tire delamination is a significant vehicle dynamics safety problem contributing to the loss of control of passenger vehicles, often resulting in accidents and injuries. This paper examines vehicle handling characteristics after a complete outer tread belt separation on 2-steel belt and 3-steel belt tires. The test vehicle used to examine this phenomenon was a Ford 15-passenger van. The test procedure was the SAE J266 circle test, and the measure of effectiveness was taken to be the lateral acceleration at which the vehicle transitioned to an oversteer characteristic. For a typical tread separation on a 2-steel belted tire, the tire loses one of its steel belts and thus much of its structural rigidity. Vehicle testing using a 3-steel belted tire, in which only the outermost single belt was removed, and the remaining two belts were oriented along opposite diagonals, showed that the vehicle remained in an understeer condition at higher lateral accelerations than with the 2-steel belted tire, indicating that the retention of greater structural rigidity to the impaired tire resulted in it maintaining much of its cornering stiffness. Until now, it has been assumed that the reduction in cornering stiffness of a delaminated tire was predominately due to the low coefficient of friction of the exposed steel belt after delamination. The testing described in this paper suggests that a significant influence on the remaining cornering stiffness of the tire after tread separation is the overall remaining structural rigidity of the tire. From this testing, it is theorized that the rigidity of the delaminated tire is at least as important as the reduced coefficient of friction for the purposes of maintaining vehicle understeer behavior after a delamination.