Computational study for tyre tread performance on hydroplaning

Hydroplaning is known as one of the factors which causes the highest rate of accident occurred on wet road condition. There are many factors that causes hydroplaning to occur on the tyre. The risk for hydroplaning occurs is related to one of these factors: tyre tread depth, tyre groove spacing, tyre groove width, surface depth water and pavement texture properties. All these have the factor for hydroplaning to occur on wet road condition. Tyre groove pattern has been commonly used in the industry to design daily used tyre for commercial passenger vehicle. It helps water escape through the groove tunnel during the drive. Hydroplaning speed can be increased through increasing the tyre groove depth. The aim of this study is to identify the groove pattern which has the highest risk of hydroplaning on wet road condition with three chosen tyre groove pattern. Rib pattern, lug pattern, block pattern have different characterize driving on road. From this study we can identify which is the best tyre groove pattern to reduce the risk of hydroplaning. Solidwork is used to visualize the 30 designs of the four tyre groove pattern. All of the tyre width are set to be at constant value with 185 mm. The 30 design can be analyzed and simulated through ANSYS software with the module Computational Fluid 0ynamic (CF0). CF0 allow us to simulate visualize the process of the tyre going through hydroplaning scenario stage by stage. The test environment for the simulation is set to be 500 x 500 x 5mm. The current finding shown that larger tyre groove width and depth and smaller tyre groove spacing experience higher hydroplaning speed. When the tyre contact point is at wet road surface, it will increase the rate of the water to escape though the channel. In conclusion, block groove tyre has is the best groove tyre to prevent the risk of hydroplaning.