This thesis aims to quantitatively analyze the effects of tire wear stages and operating conditions on vehicle braking performance and to develop a braking distance prediction model under different road conditions. In particular, under wet road condit...
This thesis aims to quantitatively analyze the effects of tire wear stages and operating conditions on vehicle braking performance and to develop a braking distance prediction model under different road conditions. In particular, under wet road conditions, braking distance can increase significantly due to degradation in drainage performance and changes in tire–road friction characteristics as tire wear progresses. Howerver, conventional full-scale vehicle braking tests face limitations in systematically reflecting various tire states due to high costs and constraints in test condition settings. As a result, studies that quantitatively explain how variations in tire wear, load, and inflation pressure lead to increases in braking distance remain limited.
To address this issue, traction tests were conducted on passenger car tires to analyze changes in tire–road friction characteristics under wet road conditions according to tire wear stages and operating conditions. From the traction test results, friction coefficient–slip (μ–slip) curves were obtained, and variations in the peak friction coefficient (μpeak) were quantitatively evaluated with respect to tire wear stage, load, and inflation pressure. The results clearly showed that μ_peak decreased as tire wear progressed, while changes in load and inflation pressure led to noticeable variations in μpeak.
Based on the estimated μpeak values, a physics-based braking distance prediction model was developed for wet road conditions. By incorporating the traction-test-based μ_peak into the braking distance formulation, the influence of tire wear stage and operating conditions on braking distance was quantitatively analyzed. In addition, the same braking distance prediction formulation was applied to dry road conditions and validated through comparisons with full-scale vehicle braking test results, confirming that the proposed model can consistently reproduce braking distance trends regardless of road conditions.
Validation results demonstrated that the proposed model reliably captured the overall braking distance trends across different tire types and wear stages. Under wet road conditions, the model effectively reflected the increasing rate of braking distance as tire wear progressed. This thesis is meaningful in that it integrates traction tests and full-scale vehicle braking tests to systematically analyze the effects of tire wear stages and operating conditions on braking performance and extends these findings to a practical braking distance prediction model. The proposed approach is expected to serve as a useful basis for predicting braking distance variations under diverse tire state conditions using limited experimental data.