AKRON—Experts from the testing and compliance firm Smithers have published a paper on tire performance in the snow using regression analysis, or a form of virtual modeling.
The accomplishment in determining the traction coefficient of a given tire in snow is evidence of the tire manufacturing industry moving toward a virtual world.
"The move toward a virtual environment-based future for tire development is being discussed in many circles right now," said Eric Pierce, principal engineer with Smithers and a co-author of the paper. "The existence of accurate snow material models or computational models is essential for better virtual development of winter tires. Such models could ensure better evaluation of the tire during the design and development stage before the manufacturing stage."
The paper, published in Cold Regions Science and Technology, is titled "Correlating tire traction performance on snow with measured parameters of ASTM F1805 using regression analysis" and was written by Pierce; Mohit Nitin Shenvi, a doctoral student at Virginia Tech; Corina Sandu (academia); and Costin Untaroiu (academia).
The paper is free to download until Aug. 5.
The paper and its research, which took place at the 50-year-old Smithers Winter Test Center in Brimley, Mich., over a 5-year period, was funded by the Center for Tire Research and its members.
