Session: 01-01-02: General Topics of Aerospace Structures

Paper Number: 110970

110970 - Variational Asymptotic Analysis of Steel Cord-Rubber Composite 

The composite nature of many of the components that comprise the typical tire structure requires sophisticated modeling capabilities. Micromechanics has been used to efficiently analyze tire performance of information afforded by elements at much smaller scales. This presentation discusses an example of leveraging multiscale structural analysis technologies to analyze a key component of tire, the bead, at multiple scales. Beads for pneumatic tires usually comprise many turns of hard drawn steel wire.  The multiple wire feature ensures a degree of lateral flexibility while maintaining the hoop stiffness. This composite configuration enables the key anisotropic structural function, fitting and anchoring the inflated tire to the rim to maintain driving and braking reactions. However, it is very challenging to include the detailed mesh of bead wire and rubber coating with elements of about 0.05mm into the tire-level simulation, especially when the tire model is processed by an explicit solver. Therefore, advanced multiscale structural analysis approach is used to tackle this type of numerical prediction. Nonlinear variational asymptotic method is applied to analyze the cross-sectional properties, i.e., extensional stiffness, bending stiffness, and twisting rigidity of the bead, in light of the assumption of Euler-Bernoulli beam model. Together with the bead cross-sectional geometry, these beam properties are used to calculate the effective 3D material properties for tire level simulation.

Presenting Author: Fang Jiang Envision Energy

Presenting Author Biography: Fang Jiang is a structural design engineer at Envision Energy Global Blade Innovation Center. He earned his Ph.D. degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Purdue University in 2017, after which he worked at Cooper Tire & Rubber Company as Numerical Predictive Technology Team Leader as well as Finite Element Method Engineer. His research area is computational structural mechanics and design, particularly for applications in nonlinear composite materials and structures.

Authors: