Virtual-Array Operational Modal Analysis of Rolling Tires Using a Single Tire Cavity Accelerometer
Abstract
The dynamics of the rolling tire govern structure-borne road noise below 500 Hz. Laser Doppler vibrometry (LDV) is the established laboratory reference for measuring rolling-tire modes. This paper presents a complementary approach that uses a single wireless tire cavity accelerometer (TCA) mounted on the inner liner and a once-per-revolution encoder on the drum of a tire-on-drum rig fitted with a cleat. Because the drum-to-tire diameter ratio (2.74) is non-integer, successive cleat impacts encounter the TCA at different circumferential positions. The TCA's contact-patch signature locates the sensor at each impact within approximately 1∘, and grouping the impact responses by angular position synthesizes a 36-element virtual array from a single 128 s run. Covariance-driven stochastic subspace identification (SSI-COV) is applied using a consensus rule across multiple parameter settings, bootstrap resampling over impacts, and a correction for window-induced damping; the complete signal-processing chain is verified on synthetic data with known modes. For a slick 195/65R15 tire rolling at 30 km/h under a 1334 N load, ten modes between 46 and 193 Hz are robustly identified, exhibiting circumferential wavenumbers from 1 to 5, damping ratios of 2.1--4.2%, and strongly complex mode shapes, with three additional modes identified tentatively. The extracted modes follow the wavenumber ladder of a stationary modal test of the same tire. Requiring no optical access and capturing the full virtual array in a single run, the proposed method is well suited to treaded tires and on-road testing, at the expense of in-tire sensor installation.
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BibTeX
@misc{dash2026virtualarray,
title = {{Virtual-Array Operational Modal Analysis of Rolling Tires Using a Single Tire Cavity Accelerometer}},
author = {Pradosh Pritam Dash and Pablo A Tarazaga},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2606.10437},
eprint = {2606.10437},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.10437},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Virtual-Array Operational Modal Analysis of Rolling Tires Using a Single Tire Cavity Accelerometer
AU - Pradosh Pritam Dash
AU - Pablo A Tarazaga
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/02
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2606.10437
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.10437
AB - The dynamics of the rolling tire govern structure-borne road noise below 500 Hz. Laser Doppler vibrometry (LDV) is the established laboratory reference for measuring rolling-tire modes. This paper presents a complementary approach that uses a single wireless tire cavity accelerometer (TCA) mounted on the inner liner and a once-per-revolution encoder on the drum of a tire-on-drum rig fitted with a cleat. Because the drum-to-tire diameter ratio (2.74) is non-integer, successive cleat impacts encounter the TCA at different circumferential positions. The TCA's contact-patch signature locates the sensor at each impact within approximately 1^∘, and grouping the impact responses by angular position synthesizes a 36-element virtual array from a single 128 s run. Covariance-driven stochastic subspace identification (SSI-COV) is applied using a consensus rule across multiple parameter settings, bootstrap resampling over impacts, and a correction for window-induced damping; the complete signal-processing chain is verified on synthetic data with known modes. For a slick 195/65R15 tire rolling at 30 km/h under a 1334 N load, ten modes between 46 and 193 Hz are robustly identified, exhibiting circumferential wavenumbers from 1 to 5, damping ratios of 2.1--4.2%, and strongly complex mode shapes, with three additional modes identified tentatively. The extracted modes follow the wavenumber ladder of a stationary modal test of the same tire. Requiring no optical access and capturing the full virtual array in a single run, the proposed method is well suited to treaded tires and on-road testing, at the expense of in-tire sensor installation.
ER -