Pneumatic tires are costly components of large off-road haul trucks used in surface mining operations. Tires are prone to premature damage during operation which can lead to hazard events and injury of personnel, loss of equipment and reduced productivity. Currently, monitoring of tire condition is performed by physical inspection which is not efficient. Options for new condition monitoring methods include off-board optical methods for detecting abnormal deformation and surface features. Physics-based modeling of the tire can provide a good understanding of tire behavior for further improved monitoring systems.

This research is mainly focused on development of a dynamic model to simulate the response of haul truck tire in presence of a fault. A finite element model is applied to explore the effect of damage on tire original properties such as stiffness. To obtain the material properties, the kinematic field of rubber specimen with a defined fault is measured in laboratory scale using optical technique.

The dynamic simulation presented in this research has shown that the differences between tire displacements can be an indicator to determine the presence of damage in the tire, for tire fault detection purposes.