Drag Racing Tires
Drag Racing Tires
(OP)
Top Fuel drag race cars currently accelerate at over 5 g's in the first hundred feet or so. The cars weight about 2175 at the start of the 1320' run, typically 4.5 to 4.7 seconds. This is about 12,000 pounds of force pushing the car, only by the tires. There is a force procuced by the exhaust thrust pushing the car down and back also but it is probably less than 500 # in each direction. How can these tires develop this kind of stick? Do they behave like a typical friction model or more like duct tape? The tires are soft and sticky and the track is also treated to be very sticky.
RE: Drag Racing Tires
Top Fuel dragrace cars would never go faster than 9 seconds ..then later to 7 seconds because of the current thinking of the tire friction coefficient model
are you sure about the 5 gforce for 100 Feet ?
more like 5 g in first few feet then 4.7 to 4.5 tapering
to 4 gs at 660 feet
heres a pretty good run
60 Ft = .855 seconds
660 Ft = 3.053 at 272.17 mph
1320 Ft = 4.527 at 326.40 mph
or a more complete run of;
60 Ft= .850
330 Ft = 2.138
660 Ft = 3.081 - 265.64
1000 Ft = 3.880
1320 Ft = 4.570 - 321.77
Larry Meaux (meauxrace2@aol.com)
Meaux Racing Heads
MaxRace Software
ET_Analyst for DragRacers
RE: Drag Racing Tires
distorting it enough to reduce markedly the tire's radius ?
if you do your calculations from the static tire radius
the Torque will be different than the dynamic radius
Larry Meaux (meauxrace2@aol.com)
Meaux Racing Heads
MaxRace Software
ET_Analyst for DragRacers
RE: Drag Racing Tires
RE: Drag Racing Tires
It is certainly not classical Coulomb friction propelling the car @ the contact patch, there is a glue-like effect that allows the tires to get more grip than Coulomb alone would provide, but even the glue-like effect is not widely accepted as being the "reason" for the awesome G's attainable @ launch.
There is an SAE paper written by Chuck Hallum entitled the "The Magic of the Drag Tire" in which he tries to explain the phenomenon in terms of a momentum change of the tread as it contacts the pavement (i.e., the tread is travelling downward as it comes around the front of the tire, and then it's vertical momentum is reduced to zero as it enters the flat contact patch.) I don't believe that this explanation alone is responsible, b/c you would think you would have a cancelling effect as the tread particles are pulled up on the back side of the contact patch (essentially being given back the momentum that they lost coming in), however, as you can see by watching a pass of a top fueler/funny car, there are some pretty extreme deformations going on in the tire that may make the momemntum effect asymmetric. I would get your hands on the Hallum paper for some interesting reading, unfortunately, to me he seems to be back solving the problem w/ the way he presents the numbers. It is commendable anyhow to even attempt any such calculations in such a radical situation.
RE: Drag Racing Tires
942484 The Magic of the Drag Tire
http://www.sae.org/servlets/productDetail?PROD_TYP=PAPE...
Mr. Hallum also wrote a number of other papers on the topic of tires. Check out the following 2 SAE papers:
983028 Understanding Race Tires
http://www.sae.org/servlets/productDetail?PROD_TYP=PAPE...
2002-01-3302 Dynamic Traction Characteristics of Tires
http://www.sae.org/servlets/productDetail?PROD_TYP=PAPE...
RE: Drag Racing Tires
RE: Drag Racing Tires
Without the stiction of the tire, the torque would simply cause the tire to spin loose and burn rubber, which is what happens when it's done on purpose.
TTFN
RE: Drag Racing Tires
Even among the "experts" in the tire world, it is a mystery how the tires do what they do. I assume they understand the properties of rubber, as well as having access to very complete information concerning its traction capabilities.
RE: Drag Racing Tires
http://insideracingtechnology.com/index.html