ABSTRACT

This article presents a new method for predicting rolling noise, which is an increasingly important subject not only for roads but also for the railway transportation industry and has attracted an increasing amount of attention. Unfortunately, there are no effective numerical methods to analyze and predict rolling noise because of the required solution accuracy. For example, tires are often simplified as shells or rings in rolling noise modelling, lacking the pattern information, and leading to low accuracy. The new method presented in this article is based on the mixed Lagrangian–Eulerian method, which can be used to analyze the velocity field, acceleration field, and contact deformation of rolling contact structures with large deformations. First, two kinds of tire meshes are developed: a Lagrangian mesh for the rolling tire and an Eulerian mesh that is fixed in space and that will be used in the noise simulation. A nonrotational acceleration field is constructed by mapping the acceleration of the Lagrangian mesh onto the Eulerian mesh. Then, using that acceleration field as the acoustic source, the rolling noise can be predicted numerically using the boundary element method. Comparison between the test and simulation results shows that this method provides reasonable predications. The case studies demonstrate that the rolling noise of a tire with a block pattern is mostly caused by the impact vibration of the tire pattern. The method provides a powerful tool for investigating rolling noise, especially for patterned tires.