Technical Analysis of Severe Cornering Induced Tire Wear on Vehicle Limit Handling through Repeatable On-Track Vehicle Testing 2018-01-0558

In repeated physical testing of vehicles at or near their handling limit, tire shoulder wear occurs that is not typical of normal customer use. It has been observed for decades that this type of severe cornering induced tire wear can have a significant effect on the force and moment characteristics of tires. In this study, the severe cornering wear effect was studied by testing vehicles in a highly controlled manner using a robot steering controller. This testing shows how vehicle response to the exact same steering input changes significantly as the number of runs on the same tires accumulates. In fact, vehicles were found to not lift tires from the ground in initial runs then tip-up hard onto outriggers in later runs as the tires are abraded. Additionally, for one vehicle configuration an additional run was made with tires that had accumulated 16,000 km (10,000 miles) of normal customer usage. The results of that test confirmed that changes in vehicle response due to severe cornering are not observed on tires worn in a typical manner. Therefore, when performing limit handling maneuvers, attention should be given to how the tires are changing and what the effect is to the test results.