Estimation of tire-road contact forces through a model-based approach employing strain measurements

The employment of intelligent tires to test the vehicle performances is ever-increasing in the last years. Many research activities have been made to correlate measurements provided by sensors to the tire dynamics. In this paper, a novel tire-road forces estimation technique is presented. The developed estimator is based on an approximation of the well-known Flexible Ring Tire Model (FRTM) and therefore, it is suitable for real-time normal and tangential forces identification. Only the tread band strain measurements are employed in the developed algorithm which can estimate the tire-road forces at every wheel revolution. The tool is validated through both numerical and experimental tests. The results indicate that the developed estimation algorithm, obtained by a mathematical inversion of the FRTM, can be employed as a monitoring tool for tires and vehicles.