This conference paper was submitted for presentation at the NAFEMS World Congress 2025, held in Salzburg, Austria from May 19–22, 2025.

Abstract

Predicting the consequences of a road vehicle's tire impact against a curb is a challenging problem that can best be solved with a multi-physics simulation approach considering the different phenomena that should be analyzed at different scales. During such a maneuver the damage is generally caused by an internal tire failure which requires comprehensive non-linear modeling including components like steel cords, fabrics, rubber compounds, and interactions between the tire itself with the rim and road surfaces. This complexity can be managed by a finite element analysis with the possibility to include geometrical, material, and contact non-linearities of the deformable body. On the other hand, the vehicle mass and inertia properties, the dynamic behavior, the suspension elasto-kinematic, and the driver feedback play an important role in this highly transient phenomenon, making the multibody system simulation the most appropriate approach with the possibility of specifying easily vehicle kinematic hardpoints, bushings characteristics, spring and damper behavior, control logics and flexible bodies from reduced order models or beam based. Due to the non-linear nature of the phenomena, the mutual interaction between tire and vehicle should be simulated to get a realistic behavior. Traditionally, one can use a multibody system simulation with empirical, semi-physical, or physical tire models to calculate the loads that occur during the impact and transfer these loads to a finite element analysis. However, the accuracy loss of the simplified tire model and the complexity of the workflow can make the results unsatisfactory with an unclear return on investment. The proposed work aims to replicate the real-world scenario with a co-simulation approach based on a highly specialized coupling algorithm that enables sub-cycling while preserving stability at the interface; creating and exchanging operators, solving interface forces to preserve velocity compatibility at the interface, and handling constraints at the interface appropriately. It will demonstrate the potentiality of the process, the analysis outcomes, and the computational performance of this approach.