Contact and Sliding Simulation of Rubber Disk on Rigid Surface with Microscopic Roughness

It is crucial to obtain detailed information about frictional interaction between tire and road surface to estimate performance of vehicle brake system or tire on real road surface. Simulation using Finite Element Method (FEM) in addition to experimental procedure is regarded to be useful to investigate contact behavior between tire and road surface. However, indeed, it is difficult to apply FEM simulation for such a problem since contact and sliding of rubber on rough rigid road surface may cause local large element distortion on rubber material and simulation may fail by negative volume error. In this paper, modeling of a rubber disk and rigid road surface with microscopic roughness, which can be used as a baseline for simulation of contact behavior between tire and road surface, is described. Some investigation for analysis technique to ensure stable computation of rubber disk and road surface model under severe condition has been made. It was shown that proposed modeling technique could avoid extreme mesh distortion during simulation. It is expected that the proposed technique can be used in simulation of rolling/sliding tire on real road surface.