Abstract

Under the guidance of the SAE Truck Tire Characteristics Task Force, the background to support the creation of a recommended practice for experimentally determining the free‐rolling cornering properties of heavy‐duty truck tires has been developed. The value of such a recommended practice lies in the establishment of a broadly accepted procedure for obtaining the free‐rolling cornering data needed to represent tires in vehicle dynamics simulations of commercial trucks.

This paper presents the proposed test procedure and background data. It contains a summary of the proposed test procedure, example data from CALSPAN and UMTRI using the proposed procedure, a statistical comparison of the data from CALSPAN and UMTRI, a discussion of the effect of inflation pressure on the data, a discussion of how the proposed test affects tire cornering properties and tread surface topography, and a look at the projected future work of the task force.