ABSTRACT
This chapter presents essential tire-road characteristics, including tire longitudinal slippage, tire friction and lateral force – slip angle characteristics that are based on empirical approach. Due to the tire-road sliding adhesion and tire elastic deflections, the wheel moves forward under the action of the driving torque. The bigger the driving torque, the smaller the rolling radius and so is the wheel linear velocity. The coefficient corresponds to a magnitude of the tractive force that is developed by the wheel at “current” time moment of motion, not the maximum friction force in the tire-road contact patch. The current friction coefficient in depends on the tire-road surface materials, tire tread, weather conditions and also some other forces influence relationship. The peak friction coefficient presents the maximal percentage of the normal force that can be converted into the longitudinal force on a particular road surface.
