Abstract The achievement of low rolling resistance and long-term durability of tires on various vehicles is of great challenge. Tire performances heavily depend on rubber properties; however, the thermo-mechanical coupling characteristics of rubber composites are complicated rendering the design of high-performance tires time-consuming and costly. In our research, the transient temperature and rolling resistance of a solid rubber tire were performed based on the thermo-mechanical coupling approach and nonlinear viscoelastic theory by using finite element method. Particular attention was paid to the strain cycles as the tire rolling on the road presents non-sinusoidal deformation. First, a static three dimensional tire-road contact analysis was conducted to obtain the principal strain cycles. Second, the 100th-order Fourier sine series was used to approximate the strain amplitude. Third, the heat generation rate proportional to the product of the loss modulus and the square of strain amplitude was calculated. The loss modulus was updated as a function of strain amplitude, temperature and frequency. Loss modulus softening effect was also considered. A practical method was proposed to compute the rolling resistance and transient temperature distributions by establishing a 2-D axisymmetric model. A rubber rolling tester was used to verify the numerical results. The comparison between numerical data and test data reveals that the proposed analytical method is a reliable approach to predict rolling resistance and transient temperature distribution for rubber tires. At last, the dependence of rolling resistance and heat build-up on thermal conductivity and loss factor were investigated by the parametric numerical experiments.

中文翻译：

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实心橡胶轮胎瞬态温度与滚动阻力热-机耦合分析：数值模拟与实验验证

摘要 在各种车辆上实现轮胎的低滚动阻力和长期耐用性是一个巨大的挑战。轮胎性能在很大程度上取决于橡胶性能；然而，橡胶复合材料的热机械耦合特性很复杂，使得高性能轮胎的设计既费时又费钱。在我们的研究中，基于热-机械耦合方法和非线性粘弹性理论，使用有限元方法进行了实心橡胶轮胎的瞬态温度和滚动阻力。特别注意应变循环，因为在道路上滚动的轮胎呈现非正弦变形。首先，进行静态三维轮胎-道路接触分析以获得主应变循环。第二，100 阶傅立叶正弦级数用于近似应变幅值。第三，计算出与损耗模量和应变幅度平方的乘积成正比的发热率。损耗模量作为应变幅度、温度和频率的函数进行更新。还考虑了损耗模量软化效应。提出了一种通过建立二维轴对称模型来计算滚动阻力和瞬态温度分布的实用方法。使用橡胶滚动试验机来验证数值结果。数值数据与试验数据的比较表明，所提出的分析方法是预测橡胶轮胎滚动阻力和瞬态温度分布的可靠方法。最后，