Modeling and Analysis of tire-terrain Interaction using discrete element methods

Tire–terrain interaction plays a vital role in the mobility and control of off-road vehicles, especially under unstructured and granular conditions. This thesis explores tire–terrain interaction using two Discrete Element Method (DEM) -based platforms: the open-source simulation program Project Chrono, and the software EDEM from Altair.The thesis focuses on the simulation of tire behavior on dry granular terrains such as sand and gravel using EDEM–Adams co-simulation, with limited comparison to Projct Chrono to evaluate computational performance.EDEM is adopted as the primary DEM platform due to its robust contact modeling capabilities and GPU acceleration support. However, its limited multibody kinematic capabilities necessitate coupling with Adams for dynamic vehicle modeling. The Hertz–Mindlin (no-slip) contact model is selected, given its suitability for simulating dry, cohesionless granular media.The work involves constructing detailed simulation scenarios in both EDEM and Adams, and establishing a co-simulation interface via ACSI. Simulations are conducted using a HMMWV-type tire traversing various granular terrains to analyze tire–soil interaction phenomena such as longitudinal force, lateral force, sinkage under different operating conditions. Although hardware limitations required some compromise in particle size resolution and the absence of calibration experiments for material tuning, the results demonstrate promising trends and realistic behaviors. The study further extends to full-vehicle simulations on granular terrains, offering new insights into the application of DEM-based approaches in off-road mobility analysis. These tests provide a comprehensive evaluation of tire–terrain interaction through DEM-MBD method for complex off-road scenarios.