On the use of geometrically exact shells for dynamic tire simulation

In the present work a vehicular tire is modeled by using geometrically exact shells. The discretization is done with the help of isoparametric quadrilateral finite elements. The interpolation is performed with linear Lagrangian polynomials for the mid surface as well as for the director field. As time stepping method for the resulting DAE a modified midpoint rule is chosen. To handle the interaction with a rigid road surface, a one sided normal contact formulation is introduced. An orthotropic material model for geometrically exact shells derived from 3D continuum theory is used to describe the anistropic behavior of the tire material. Inflation pressure is taken into account with a configuration dependent force. Some static simulations are presented and compared to measurements on a real tire.