Energy balance and tyre motions during shimmy

Shimmy is an engineering example of self-excited vibration. Much research on shimmy has considered the tyre as the positive feedback or negative damping to create instability of the entire system. In this context, we focus on the relation between the energy balance, tyre motion and shimmy stability. The energy flow method is applied to the Von Schlippe tyre model to illustrate the energy transfer through tyre during periodic excitations. It evaluates the tyre performance with a prescribed sinusoidal motion and provides a novel approach in evaluating tyre models. A trailing wheel system is used to study the tyre motion at the boundary of shimmy stability. The tyre motion at these boundaries has to satisfy the condition that zero energy is transferred from the forward motion to the lateral/yaw motion.