TRICK (Tire/Road Interaction Characterization & Knowledge) tool is based on a physical vehicle model, running in innovative “backward” approach, which processes experimental signals acquired from a basic set of onboard sensors and a proper vehicle sideslip angle evaluation system.
The output of the tool consists in several extra “virtual telemetry” physical channels, including the tires’ dynamics and kinematics, in terms of forces, wheel orientation and slip estimations at each corner. Giving the possibility to estimate the tires’ behavior in each vehicle operating condition, TRICK enriches the standard telemetry datasets with the information concerning the tire interaction characteristics and, therefore, increases the amount of information that track sessions can provide.
Furthermore, TRICK dynamic and kinematic channels per corner enable the employment of the tire physical models, allowing to add further physical features within the enriched dataset, as thermal, wear or transient phenomena. Starting from the outdoor data, so constituted dataset can be exploited to evaluate the dynamic tire characteristics or to properly identify the tire parameters from a multi-physical point of view, with the aim to calibrate the tire models in the widest possible vehicle working conditions range and to reproduce its extremely non-linear behavior within the simulation environment.
The main targets for which such methodology has been conceived are:
- tire characterization without bench testing
- objective analysis of test sessions results and performance evaluation
- tire models’ parameters identification
The definition of a procedure able to estimate tire forces and slip indices during test sessions can represent a crucial task for many in automotive industry, such as vehicle manufacturers, vehicle dynamics engineers and tire production companies. TRICK has been exploited as both a development tool to be employed in the earliest prototyping phases and as a data analysis advanced tool for experimental activities carried out with high performance vehicles during the setup preparation sessions, since it significantly increases the amount of crucial data available to understand how the vehicle and its tires are performing, taking strategic decisions for vehicle and tires setup development.
The innovation represented by the TRICK is in its novel approach in tire characterization and in tire models correlation with outdoor vehicle data, since it enables the understanding of the dynamic response of the whole vehicle and of the tires by means of simple and smart outdoor track sessions, carried out employing the vehicle as a moving lab, with no need of bulky and expensive tire test benches.
Silver medal at Vehicle Dynamics awards 2014
For further info:
- T.R.I.C.K.: Tire/Road Interaction Characterization & Knowledge – A tool for the evaluation of tire and vehicle performances in outdoor test sessions – Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing (link)
- Towards T.R.I.C.K. 2.0 – A Tool for the Evaluation of the Vehicle Performance Through the Use of an Advanced Sensor System (link)
- T.R.I.C.K. Real Time. A Tool for the Real-Time Onboard Tire Performance Evaluation (link)