It's a fascinating field and one in which I take an interest. Many years ago I worked for some years as a rheologist (a geek who pokes and prods materials in particular ways to find out how they flow and respond).
Interestingly (or not depending upon ones perspective
) one could be forgiven for considering rubber (as used in tyres) to be elastic in behaviour - which, for the most part, it is. However, when one looks at the rubber used in vehicle tyres under oscillatory (sinusoidal) loading there are certain frequencies where there is a significant viscous (consider it as damping) behaviour. This leads to energy dissipation (which elastic behaviour does not) and presumably heat generation (where else would the energy go?).
I never looked at anything like F1 tyres (my involvement at the time was looking at the properties of bitumen (used in roads) modification by various polymers), but the article makes a lot of sense. My guess is that the rubber compound used in F1 tyres must be rather soft to permit the tyre to deform (elastically) to assume the shape of the track surface and thereby generate grip. However, we all know that the tyres must be hot to work and this will be generated (on track) by a viscous component in which stress is dissipated into the tyre - of course slipping will also generate heat via frictional losses. The elastic component must also be extremely high to permit recovery of the micro-strains so that the tyre can reform and then deform next time around... fascinating stuff. (makes me wish I was back in the lab!)
Ciro, I have seen some other articles on tyre interaction and noise generation - another interesting field!
