Abstract

It is well known that the plysteer residual cornering force (PRCF) of tires plays an important role in assessing vehicle pull problems, and efforts have been made in the tire industry to clarify the underlying mechanisms and to control the phenomenon from the engineering point of view. The magnitude of PRCF of radial tires is affected not only by the belt construction but also by the design of tread pattern for which the experimental evaluations are time‐ and cost‐consuming tasks in the tire development process. This paper proposes the finite element approach to predict PRCF of tires that is supposed to overcome those difficulties. Results of the finite element predictions are compared with experiments, and discussions are also presented.