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Experimental Investigation of the Influence of Tire Design Parameters on Anti-

lock Braking System (ABS) Performance

Article  in  SAE International Journal of Passenger Cars - Mechanical Systems · May 2015

DOI: 10.4271/2015-01-1511

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2015-01-1511
Published 04/14/2015
Copyright © 2015 SAE International
doi:10.4271/2015-01-1511
saepcmech.saejournals.org

Experimental Investigation of the Influence of Tire Design Parameters

on Anti-lock Braking System (ABS) Performance
Srikanth Sivaramakrishnan, Kanwar Bharat Singh, and Peter Lee
Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.

ABSTRACT
Anti-lock Braking System (ABS) is a critical safety component and its performance is crucial for every vehicle manufacturer. The tire
plays an important role during an ABS braking maneuver as it is the component that connects the vehicle to the ground and is
responsible for generating braking force. The steady-state and transient properties of the tire affect the operation of the vehicle's ABS
system and consequently affects its performance/ operational efficiency. The main objective of this study is to investigate how tire
design changes influence its interaction with the ABS and its eventual effect on stopping distance. This was conducted through an
experimental study where tires were built with three levels of variation in carcass stiffness, tread stiffness and tread compound.
Following this, ABS braking maneuvers were performed on two instrumented vehicles including a mid-tier sedan and a high-
performance sports car. The steady-state properties of the tire were calculated from experimental data measured both on the vehicle and
from the braking skid trailer and thereafter the sensitivity of a given ABS system to such changes in tire properties were analyzed.
Lastly, the feasibility of adding intelligence in ABS controllers is investigated through an on-line tire identification routine to determine
the tire slip set point value for the ABS controller to maximize the tire braking force.

CITATION: Sivaramakrishnan, S., Singh, K., and Lee, P., "Experimental Investigation of the Influence of Tire Design Parameters on
Anti-lock Braking System (ABS) Performance," SAE Int. J. Passeng. Cars - Mech. Syst. 8(2):2015, doi:10.4271/2015-01-1511.

INTRODUCTION Based on this premise, multiple studies have been undertaken to

understand how tires interact with the ABS. Roth et al [1] indicate
The mechanism of force generation during an emergency braking
through simulation and experimental data that the relaxation length of
situation consists of multiple steps. The first step involves the
a tire affects ABS performance only under certain criteria. Kidney et
application of pedal force from the driver, which builds up pressure in
al [2] show that the shape of the tire-force curve plays an important
the master cylinder and the wheel calipers. The braking moment
role in the cycling behavior of the ABS. Adcox et al [3] showed
exerted by the calipers is then translated into force through slip
through simulation studies and later by experimental verification
generation at the contact path of the tire-road interface. The ABS
through Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) [4] that the influence of
controller simultaneously activates and begins monitoring and
torsional dynamics of the tire is dependent on the wheel speed filter
regulating brake pressure at the wheel calipers through solenoid
and no effect was found for a minimum filter cut-off frequency of 15
valves using a pre-programmed logic until the vehicle speed falls
Hz. The influence of inflation pressure on stopping distance was
below a specified threshold. It can be observed that the performance
performed in [6,7]. Srikanth et al [5,17] extended this study by also
of the ABS system in this process is governed by influencing factors
investigating the influence of other operating conditions such as tire
at multiple stages such as controller lag, hydraulic delays and finally
construction, temperature and tread depth of a tire on ABS efficiency
the dynamics of the tire and its interaction with the road surface at the
and the extent of variation it can cause on stopping distance.
contact patch. Due to its cascading nature, an excessive delay at any
stage can compound into a significant effect on stopping distance.
The objective of this study is to understand how certain tire design
parameters, namely carcass stiffness, tread compound and tread
From the perspective of a tire manufacturer, developing an in-depth
stiffness affects the performance of an ABS system. This is explained
understanding of the various delaying factors at the tire level and the
in two sections. The first part of the study deals with the design of
factors influencing its interaction with the ABS will serve beneficial
experiments and the methods employed to collect data from
in identifying problem points and consecutively tweaking tire design
instrumented vehicle braking tests and traction trailer with different
to reduce stopping distance. This would also help in identifying tire
sets of tires. The second part analyzes the effect of these tire design
performance changes during normal usage where properties such as
parameters on steady-state tire characteristics derived from the
tread depth continuously change.
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braking skid trailer. This is followed by an analysis of the variation of Table 2. Tire constructions based on design combinations
stopping distance under different tire constructions for two types of
vehicles followed by more detailed explanations of the reasons
behind such variations inferred based on signals measured from the
instrumented vehicles. The final part of the study provides an
illustrative example of the use of tire identification for introducing
intelligence in ABS algorithms to further improve vehicle safety and
reduce stopping distance.

DESIGN OF EXPERIMENT
The first step towards understanding the relationship between tire
design properties and ABS performance through experimental means
is the selection of parameters to vary and analyze. Any given tire has
multiple components that can be changed to affect the overall
properties of the tire. In this study, the choice was made to construct EXPERIMENTAL DATA
tires with combinations of different carcass stiffness, tread compound
The collection of experimental data was performed on three different
and tread stiffness because these tire properties have the highest
experimental setups:
influence on longitudinal tire-force characteristics such as braking
stiffness, peak grip and shape of the curve as shown in Figure 1, all of
1. Tire data - Braking skid trailer
which play a role in ABS braking performance of a vehicle.
2. Vehicle ABS braking data
a. Instrumented high-performance vehicle
b. Instrumented mid-tier passenger sedan

Braking Skid Trailer

Figure 1. Influence of tire design parameters on the longitudinal force-slip
curve
Table 1 shows the levels of variation that were employed while
constructing tires for this study and the total number of unique
constructions of tires that were built based on all possible
combinations of carcass stiffness and tread cap compounds used in
this study are shown in Table 2. The variation of tread stiffness was
achieved by changing the tread depth of the tire as it is known that
the reduction of tread depth leads to an increase in tread stiffness,
thus leading to a total of 27 tire constructions. All constructions were
derived as variations of a high performance summer tire.
The main purpose of the braking skid trailer, as shown in Figure 2, is
to obtain the longitudinal force-slip curve of the tire and extract
properties such as braking stiffness, peak grip, optimal slip ratio and
sliding grip.
Experimental Procedure
In this setup, the vertical load on the tire is controlled and the reaction
forces are measured at the hub of the tire in the longitudinal and
vertical direction after application of braking torque. The rolling
radius re is calculated from the initial free-rolling speed ω of the tire
as Vx = reω where Vx is the absolute velocity calculated from GPS,
which is maintained at a constant speed. This value of rolling radius
is then assumed to be fixed throughout the experiment and used to
calculate the slip ratio λ based on the measured wheel speed as:

Table 1. Tire design property variation

Figure 2. Braking Skid Trailer at Goodyear Proving Grounds, San Angelo,

Texas
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Table 3. Traction trailer operating conditions Table 4. Devices used for vehicle instrumentation

The operating conditions maintained in the experiments are shown in

Table 3. The loads were selected to reflect static load on the high
performance vehicle used in this study on the tires at the front axle
and the rear axle. It was ensured that the lockup rate for the tires is
kept constant during all the runs by maintaining the same brake
pressure ramp-up rate to generate uniform data for comparison.

Data Processing
The collected force-slip data is smoothed and averaged over multiple
lockups using locally weighted scatterplot smoothing to obtain an
approximate force-slip curve for the tire, as shown in Figure 3. The
composite curve, which is obtained at two loads for each tire is then
utilized to obtain the peak grip, braking stiffness and optimal slip
ratio at the front and rear axle.
Figure 4. Vehicle Instrumentation using a) Force hubs and b) Pressure sensors
at brake calipers
Experimental Procedure
The initial velocity for all braking runs were at speeds slightly above
100 kph under similar surface and weather conditions as the traction
trailer tests. A maximum of 8 braking runs were conducted for each
tire construction per vehicle in which the test driver applies the pedal
force.

Figure 3. Traction trailer experimental data

Instrumented Vehicle Braking

The main purpose of conducting instrumented vehicle braking tests is
to have a standardized method of measuring stopping distance which
would account for variations that occur due to changes in braking
patterns by test drivers. In this study, it was chosen to obtain braking
data from to different classes of vehicles to understand how stopping
distance sensitivity to tire design varies across different ABS systems.
Both vehicles were chosen to have similar curb weights, although
load distribution may vary due to different vehicle configurations.
Table 4 shows the list of devices used and the signals measured.
Brake pressure at the wheels were measured at the caliper. Figure 4
shows the instrumentation at the individual wheels. Figure 5. Procedure adopted for calculation of stopping distance
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Data Processing
For all the braking runs, the following procedure was followed to
obtain standardized values of stopping distance from 100 kph to 0
kph for all constructions as shown in Figure 5:

1. The start of braking is detected from the intersection of slope of

initial increase in deceleration from 0.1g to 0.6g with g=0 line.
2. A straight liner is fitted to data up to 2 seconds before the start
of braking to obtain the shift in the velocity profile to 100 kph.
3. The shifted velocity profile is then integrated from 100 kph to 0
kph to obtain the stopping distance.
4. The average stopping distance for a given tire construction is
then calculated from all 8 braking runs after removing outliers
which can occur due to variations in the test procedure that are
outside the control of the operator.

INFLUENCE OF TIRE DESIGN

PARAMETERS ON TIRE
CHARACTERISTICS
One of the key components to approaching tire design variations is to
understand the effect of tread stiffness, carcass stiffness and tread
compound on tire characteristics that impact ABS performance,
which are:
1. Peak Grip
2. Braking Stiffness
3. Optimal Slip Ratio
4. Shape factor (drop after the peak)
Tire design parameters have a combined effect on all these
characteristics and it becomes essential to analyze which parameters
have a dominant effect on important tire characteristics. Data
extracted from the traction trailer is utilized for this purpose.
In this section, the variation of tire characteristics at front tire loads
are considered for analysis and interpretation due to a high
contribution of braking force from the front axle during an ABS
braking maneuver. For all analysis, low grip tread compound, low
tread stiffness (new tire) and low carcass stiffness are considered to
be the nominal design for the tire in this study and all tire property
values will be normalized around this tire to show characteristic
variations as a percentage change. It is assumed that in this set, the
level of variation in tread stiffness due to tread depth is much higher
than the change due to tread compound. A summary of all the
observed sensitivities are shown in Table 5.
Figure 6. Variation of peak grip for different tire constructions at front axle
load
Figure 6 shows the variation of peak grip as influenced by tread
compound, tread stiffness and carcass stiffness, computed from the
longitudinal force versus slip curve of the tire obtained from braking
skid trailer experiments. The following observations were made
based on the results:
• It is observed that the change from low to high grip tread
compound leads to a consistent increase in peak grip. This
sensitivity is reduced at higher values of tread stiffness.
This might be due to very low tread depth that reduce the
effectiveness of a change in tread compound.
• Low values of peak grip were computed for tire constructions
with high tread stiffness across all combinations of carcass
stiffness and tread cap compound indicating that a worn tire
would have less grip in comparison to a new tire.
• As expected, carcass stiffness does not show any conclusive
effect on the peak grip of the tire.
Variation of Braking Stiffness
The braking stiffness can be expressed as the resultant stiffness from
a combination of carcass stiffness and tread stiffness [8]:

Variation of Peak Grip
The peak grip of the tire has a direct correlation with stopping
distance as this parameter signifies the maximum deceleration the
vehicle can attain. Although this parameter doesn't directly impact the
operation of the ABS, average vehicle deceleration changes by the
actual magnitude of the change in peak grip, which makes this
parameter important for braking performance.
Where
Cx - Braking stiffness (linear slope around zero slip)
Ccx - Carcass stiffness (function of construction, belt package)
Cpλ - Tread stiffness per unit length of contact patch (function of tread
depth and cap compound)

a - Half of contact patch length (function of load)

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The influence of braking stiffness in ABS braking is mainly seen
during the initial braking cycles in the pressure build up stage. A
higher braking stiffness indicates that the tire would produce more
braking force quicker and exceed the acceleration thresholds at a
faster rate. This parameter is directly correlated with the location of
the optimal slip point of the tire-force curve as a high braking
stiffness indicates a lower optimal slip ratio. This can lead to a shorter
or longer stopping distance depending on the typical operating slip
range of the ABS. For a given pressure ramp-up rate, this can lead to
a significant drop in braking force and efficiency if the ABS operates
in the linear region. Since most of the loss in stopping distance is
from the first cycle of braking, the braking stiffness plays a crucial
role in the performance of the ABS. Figure 7 shows the variation of
Braking Stiffness as with changes in tread compound, tread stiffness
and carcass stiffness. The following observations were made based on
the results:
• Tread stiffness has the highest influence on braking stiffness
with an increase of up to 48% from the nominal value.
• In this case, a high grip tread cap compound is seen to increase
braking stiffness by as much as 35%. This might be due to the
different material properties of the rubber used in the tread cap
compound. However, this trend is not expected across all types
of tires since the stiffness of the tread compound does not have a
direct correlation with compound friction.
• Carcass stiffness does not indicate a generalized trend on
braking stiffness in this experimental set. This can be explained
by the dominance of tread stiffness and cap compound in the
resultant braking stiffness. In addition to this, the nominal
carcass stiffness of this set is high because the tire construction
is of low aspect ratio meant for high performance vehicles.
• It is also observed that in this experimental set, the average
variation in braking stiffness is higher than that of the peak
grip of the tire, which indicates this is a parameter with higher
sensitivity to tire design changes.
Figure 7. Variation of braking stiffness for different tire constructions at front
axle load
Variation of Shape Factor
The shape factor of the tire is an indication of the drop in the grip of
the tire after crossing the peak point. The shape factor of the tire
dictates ABS efficiency after the first cycle of braking where the slip
loops around the peak zone of the tire. If there is a sharper drop after
the peak, slip overshoots can lead to a significant loss in stopping
distance during ABS braking. This effect is more prominent for tires
with high braking stiffness and a sharp drop after peak because the
tire is more prone to overshoot due to the optimal slip being achieved
faster.
In this tire set, the shape factor was found to be influenced primarily
by tread stiffness of the tire. Although it is known that the tread cap
compound can also affect the shape of the curve, minimal change in
shape factor was found due to changes in the tread cap compound for
a fixed tread depth as the variation was performed only for a summer
cap compound. Figure 8 illustrates a comparsion of the longtudinal
force curve of a new tire (low tread stiffness) versus a worn tire (high
tread stiffness) obtained from the braking skid trailer at front axle
load. It can be seen that the drop in grip after the peak is higher for
the worn tire in comparison to the new tire. It is however worth
noting here that the worn tire is created in laboratory conditions
through buffing and might not always reflect a worn tire from actual
field use.
Figure 8. Comparison of shape factor for tires with different tread stiffness
Table 5. Summary of tire design influences on tire characteristics
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STOPPING DISTANCE SENSITIVITY
The variation of computed stopping distance for all 27 tire
constructions in every combination of carcass stiffness, tread
compound and tread stiffness is shown in Figure 9 for a passenger
sedan and a high performance vehicle. The computed values of
stopping distance were converted to ratings on a scale of 100 and
normalized to a reference high performance summer tire in order to
ensure that other factors such as weather conditions, test driver
variability and road surface variations do not affect the results. In
this, a higher rating indicates a lower stopping distance. The
following observations were made based on the results:
• The passenger sedan has 4.7 m higher stopping distance on
average when compared to the high performance vehicle for
the same tires, despite having similar weights. This indicates
that the passenger sedan has lower grip utilization and ABS
efficiency.
• From the variance of ratings shown in Table 6, the passenger
sedan shows higher variation in stopping distance when
compared to the high performance vehicle which indicates that
it is more sensitive to changes in tire construction.
• Both vehicles record the lowest stopping distance for the
combination of medium tread stiffness and carcass stiffness and
high grip tread compound, indicating that there is an ideal zone
for braking stiffness that can improve stopping distance. The
highest stopping distance is recorded for a combination of high
carcass stiffness, tread stiffness and low grip tread compound.
For both vehicles, the shortest stopping distances were observed
for tire constructions with high grip tread cap compound
indicating its high influence on the actual stopping distance of
the vehicle.
• The passenger sedan responds the most to changes in tread
stiffness whereas the high performance vehicle responds the
most to changes in tread compound. This shows that the high
performance vehicle ABS is able to adapt itself to changes in
tire structural properties to a large extent, and is largely only
limited by peak grip.
• The sensitivity to tread compound increases at high tread
stiffness for both vehicles. This can be due to the large
variations in peak grip, braking stiffness and shape factor that
occur at low tread depths, indicating increased sensitivity for a
worn tire in comparison to a new tire.
• Carcass stiffness has a low influence on stopping distance,
its effect and generalized trend is inconclusive due to the
dominating effects of tread stiffness and tread compound on
tire characteristics. This can be explained due to the fact that
high performance tires have inherently high stiffness in both
lateral and longitudinal directions. Hence, any further changes
in carcass stiffness has a lower effect on overall tire properties.
It is observed that for this tire set an increase in braking stiffness
generally corresponds to lower stopping distance provided the
peak grip is relatively unchanged.

Figure 9. Stopping distance ratings (higher value indicates lower stopping distance) for ABS braking using all tire constructions for a) Passenger sedan and b) High
performance vehicle
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A summary of observed tire design influences of stopping distance is
shown in Table 7.
Table 6. Summary of stopping distance ratings
Table 7. Observed trends in stopping distance with variation of tire design
parameters
ANALYSIS OF ABS BRAKING DATA FROM
INSTRUMENTED VEHICLE TESTS
The analysis of signals measured during the ABS braking maneuvers
can be used to obtain insights into the operation of the ABS and how
its interaction with tires leads to the final variation in stopping
distance. In this section, the analysis is separated into two groups to
understand: 1. differences at the vehicle level and; 2. differences due
to changes in tire characteristics. This type of segregation enables us
to understand how the ABS algorithm primarily operates in different
vehicles and how performance is overall influenced due to factors
such as vehicle suspension design, brake pressure proportioning etc.,
versus differences that occur due to tire design changes and how an
ABS system corresponding to a particular vehicle responds to these
changes.

Figure 10. Comparison of ABS braking between passenger sedan and high performance vehicle
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Differences in Vehicle Design and ABS Algorithm
In order to understand the differences in operation between high
performance vehicle and the passenger sedan, the brake pressure
signals are used along with force measurements from the
instrumented wheel to correlate to the overall deceleration of the
vehicle. Based on the plotted figures, the following observations were
made:
• As shown in Figure 10a, the passenger sedan has a higher load
transfer to the front axle in comparison to the high performance
vehicle, mainly due to its suspension design. This results in very
low load at the rear axle, effectively reducing its contribution to
braking force. Also this simultaneously leads to a drop in grip
at the front axle since peak grip of the tire reduces with load.
The combined result of this is a reduction in ABS efficiency and
increase in stopping distance for the passenger sedan.
• It can be seen that the grip utilization in the rear axle is much
higher for the high performance vehicle than the passenger
sedan, as shown in Figure 10b, which also plays a role in
increasing the total braking force and consequently reducing
stopping distance
• From Figure 10c, it can be seen that the high performance
vehicle has a higher brake pressure in the rear axle in
comparison to the passenger sedan. However, it would be
difficult to compare absolute values of brake pressure due to
differences in brake caliper width, cylinder diameter etc. that
would lead to different gains in braking torque
• The high performance vehicle has additional pressure states
(step increase and decrease) incorporated into the ABS
controller that enables finer control over tire slip. This is evident
in the brake pressure comparison of the rear axle in Figure 10c
where the ABS is able to progressively increase and maintain a
high brake pressure.
Figure 11. ABS Braking on the high performance vehicle using tires with different tread cap compounds
From the above analysis, it is evident that the combination of these
factors result in a lower deceleration for the passenger sedan than the
high performance vehicle, as shown in Figure 10d. The high
performance vehicle has a more efficient ABS in comparison to the
passenger sedan to achieve lower stopping distance.
Vehicle Sensitivity to Tire Characteristics
Following the analysis of vehicle level differences, the response of
the ABS to changes in tire properties that are commonly reflected on
both vehicles can be studied. It is observed that although the
sensitivities are different for each vehicle due proprietary ABS
algorithms and wheel deceleration or slip thresholds, the generalized
trends in the variation of stopping distance to tire property changes
are similar.
Influence of Tread Compound
The influence of tread compound on stopping distance is as expected
due to its effect on peak grip, which eventually decides the maximum
vehicle deceleration. Figure 11 illustrates a specific example of ABS
braking on the high performance vehicle where tread cap compound
is varied for a fixed tread and carcass stiffness. The following
observations were made:
• From the plot of the vehicle deceleration shown in Figure 11a, it
is clearly seen that when high friction tread cap compounds are
used, the vehicle is able to achieve a higher peak deceleration
in the first few cycles of the ABS braking maneuver which is of
crucial importance for ABS efficiency. This can also be seen in
the brake pressure profile of the front axle of the vehicle shown
in Figure 11b where higher brake pressures were achieved
during the first few cycles which translates to more braking
force.
• The influence of tread compound is more prominent for a worn
tire even though there is low variation in peak grip at high levels
of tread stiffness. This is because of a higher drop in grip after
the peak and also due to the change in braking stiffness which
influence ABS efficiency
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Figure 12. ABS braking on the passenger sedan using tires with varying tread stiffness

Influence of Tread Stiffness OPPORTUNITIES FOR ENHANCING

Tread stiffness presents more interesting variations as this parameters VEHICLE CONTROL SYSTEMS
affects both peak grip and braking stiffness. An increase in stopping
From the above analysis, it is evident that tire design parameters have
distance is seen in both vehicles tested, as shown in Figure 9a, but
a clear influence on ABS performance. Hence it is proposed to
can be observed more prominently in the passenger sedan. Figure 12
introduce intelligence in ABS systems through an on-line tire
shows the measured signals for a passenger sedan comparing ABS
identification routine that would estimate critical tire characteristics,
braking using tire constructions of different tread stiffness and other
which can be used to improve ABS performance through
parameters such as tread compound and carcass stiffness kept
optimization of the controller settings. For instance, the on-line tire
constant. From the brake pressure signal shown in Figure 12a, it can
identification routine could be used to determine the tire slip set point
be seen that although the tire construction with high tread stiffness
value (λmax) for the ABS controller to maximize the tire braking force,
reaches peak braking pressure faster in the first cycle, the drop in
as shown in Figure 13.
pressure after crossing the deceleration threshold is higher in
comparison to the tire with low tread stiffness. This drop is also
higher in consequent cycles and hence the average brake pressure is
significantly reduced. This can be explained from the evolution of
slip ratio of the front tires, as shown in Figure 12b where a high
overshoot in slip is observed. This leads to a significant drop in the
longitudinal force during the first cycle when the tire moves into the
low-slip region during the pressure stop stage at the front axle as seen
in Figure 12c. The lower average brake pressure at high tread
stiffness is also reflected in the braking force. All of the above
behaviors are finally reflected in Figure 12d leading to a lower
average deceleration of the vehicle.

Figure 13. On-line tire model parameter identification methodology

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An on-line tire identification routine is based on the assumption that
the traction/braking force, vertical load and wheel slip information
can be estimated indirectly using observers developed based on
vehicle dynamics measurements (acceleration, yaw and roll rates,
suspension deflections, etc.), or measured directly using certain
sensor based advanced tire concepts. In this study we propose using
an integrated vehicle state estimator comprising of a series of model
based and kinematics based observers and an effectively designed
merging scheme that ensures robust estimation performance even
during the vehicle maneuvers which show highly nonlinear tire. It is
assumed that measurements from a 6-axis Inertial Measurement Unit
(IMU) (3-axes of rotation rate measurement and 3-axes of
acceleration measurement), wheel speed sensors, and steering wheel
angle sensor are available. The block diagram in Figure 14 explicitly
shows the estimation process in its entirety.
The entire process is separated into five blocks: the first block serves
to identify the road bank and grade angles (using a kinematics-based
observer) and vehicle chassis roll (using a Kalman filter) and pitch
angles (with vehicle mass adaptation), the second block contains a
bias compensation algorithm (gravity compensation in accelerometer
measurements), a vehicle longitudinal speed estimation algorithm
(based on the measurements of the four wheel rotational speeds and
the gravity-compensated longitudinal vehicle acceleration) and a tire
load estimation algorithm (using gravity-compensated acceleration
information and roll/pitch states), the third block contains a tire
longitudinal/lateral force estimation observer (sliding-mode observer
based), while the fourth block contains a nonlinear vehicle
longitudinal and lateral velocity observer (based on unscented
Kalman filter), designed for the purpose of vehicle side-slip
estimation. Finally, the fifth block makes use of the estimations
provided by the third and the fourth block to estimate the tire
slip-ratio and slip-angle (Luenberger observer based).
Figure 14. Functional diagram of the estimation process [18]
It is worth stressing the fact that the present work is concerned with
examining the feasibility of estimating the tire model parameters in
real-time. Hence a complete description of the integrated vehicle state
estimator as shown in Figure 14 is beyond the scope of this work. A
thorough coverage of this topic with specific details about the
different schemes used for tire/vehicle state and parameter estimation
is included in our previous work [9].
Critical to the success of an online tire model parameter estimation
approach is the choice of the tire model structure. As this study
focuses on parameter estimation, it is desirable to choose a tire model
with a minimal number of model parameters. Some of the well
documented tire models in literature include the Pacejka Model [10],
Burckhardt Model [11], Kiencke and Daiss Model [12], Brush Model
[13], and the Dugoff Model [14]. Despite the ability of these tire
models to accurately describe the tire-road contact dynamics during a
braking maneuver, these models are not well suited to be used for
online identification, mainly because these models are highly
nonlinear in the unknown parameters and require computationally
intensive estimation algorithms for parameter estimation. To
overcome these limitations, we propose using a linear
parameterization (LP) for representing the friction in the tire-road
interface, suitable for on-line identification. An approximation of the
Burckhardt friction model by a linear combination of basis functions,
as presented in [15] is used as the tire model of choice in this study.
The linear structure featured by the LP simplifies the real-time
parameter identification process, since we can rely on linear
regression methods to accomplish this task. Tests were carried out to
validate the LP with experimental data. It is observed from Figure 15
that the fitting performance obtained with the LP was very
satisfactory.
Figure 15. Tire Model Validation
For the online implementation, a Recursive Least Squares (RLS) [16]
algorithm was employed to identify the linear parameters in real time,
as shown in Figure 16. As shown in Figure 17, the estimation of the
controller slip set point value (λmax) was quite satisfactory and more
importantly was reliable at the time instant at which the ABS would
be activated.
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Sivaramakrishnan et al / SAE Int. J. Passeng. Cars - Mech. Syst. / Volume 8, Issue 2 (July 2015)
Figure 16. Online estimation of tire model parameters
Figure 17. Estimation Performance
CONCLUSIONS
This study provides an experimental analysis on how tire design
parameters can influence tire characteristics such as peak grip,
braking stiffness and ultimately affect ABS performance for a
passenger sedan and high performance vehicle. Analysis of vehicle
level differences of stopping distance and measured signals at the
wheel hubs show that the passenger sedan is more sensitive to tire
construction and tread compound whereas the high performance
vehicle is more sensitive to only tread compound owing to the higher
efficiency of the ABS algorithm in addition to a suspension setup that
reduces load transfer during braking. In this experimental set, the
influence of carcass stiffness on stopping distance is low due to high
nominal stiffness and the dominance of tread compound and tread
stiffness in influencing tire characteristics.
Based on these inferences, it is to be noted that a tire undergoes
various changes in properties during its operational lifecycle due to
factors such as weather conditions and normal wear. Each vehicle
will have a different response to these variations due to the design of
the ABS algorithms and its tuning parameters. Availability of an
on-line tire model parameter estimation routine which demonstrates
robustness and convergence speed of the tire model parameter
estimates could possibly be used in the future to add intelligence to
brake based control systems such as the ABS or the collision
mitigation brake system
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Sivaramakrishnan et al / SAE Int. J. Passeng. Cars - Mech. Syst. / Volume 8, Issue 2 (July 2015)

CONTACT INFORMATION
Srikanth Sivaramakrishnan
Tire Vehicle Mechanics, Vehicle Dynamics
The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company
Akron, OH, USA
srikanth_vs@goodyear.com

Kanwar Bharat Singh

Tire Vehicle Mechanics, Vehicle Dynamics
The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company
Akron, OH, USA
kanwar-bharat_singh@goodyear.com

Peter Lee
Tire Vehicle Mechanics, Vehicle Dynamics
The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company
Akron, OH, USA
peter_lee@goodyear.com

DEFINITIONS/ABBREVIATIONS
ABS - Anti-lock Braking System
LP - Linear Parameterization
RLS - Recursive Least Squares
Peak Grip (Longitudinal) - The maximum value of the ratio of
longitudinal force to lateral force achievable by the tire under a given
set of conditions
Optimal Slip Ratio - The slip ratio corresponding to the point in the
tire longitudinal force versus slip curve at which the tire achieves
Braking Stiffness - Slope of the tire longitudinal force versus slip
ratio curve measured around zero slip ratio
Shape Factor - Parameter indicating the drop of the tire longitudinal
force versus slip curve after peak grip. A higher shape factor indicates
a steeper drop in grip with slip ratio after the peak.

Note
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the
authors and do not necessarily represent the views of The Goodyear
Tire & Rubber Company

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