ABSTRACT
Tire traction describes the force transmission between tire and road under all eventualities. It is the prerequisite for controlled steering, acceleration, and braking of self-propelled vehicles on flat tracks. It finds its upper limit in the frictional force when total sliding occurs. Rubber friction differs from that of friction between hard solids in that the friction force is a nonlinear function of the load and depends strongly on both speed and temperature, whilst in hard solids the load dependence is linear and the friction force is virtually independent of speed and temperature. Rubber friction is dominated by the viscoelastic properties of the rubber. The most striking manifestation is that the equivalence exists between temperature and speed. The master curves of the gum rubbers have all a similar shape on smooth surfaces exhibiting a single maximum of about the same height.
