Abstract Within the automotive industry, a typical way to account for tires in a roadnoise mission simulation is to use the “modal model” supplied by tire manufacturers. Even though this kind of models is certified by the suppliers and is very simple to use, it has the drawback to be disconnected from the physical description of the tire. This reflects in limiting the carmaker company to be able only to request certain modal characteristics to the supplier. The aim of this paper is to present an accurate, yet easy to use, methodology to develop an FE model of a tire, to be used in a full-vehicle simulation. The determined model must be connected to the tire physical properties. These properties are not measured directly, but determined by tuning a properly created geometric FE model to the measured point inertances of the inflated tire. This allows creating the model only by using an optimization algorithm to tune such properties. One of the key features of the developed tire model concerns its reduced dimensions in terms of number of nodes and elements. This is crucial in view of the inclusion of such a model in a full-vehicle simulation and can be achieved by assuming a two-dimensional multi-layer representation of the tire. Despite the simplicity of such an assumption, the accuracy of the model is checked by comparing the simulated hub forces in rolling conditions with properly obtained measurements for different tires. Moreover, the sensibility of the model to the physical characteristics of the simulation, such as the rolling speed, is verified with respect to measurements. Introduction Pneumatic tires are one of the most important components in an automotive vehicle since they have to support the vehicle and provide forces necessary to control the vehicle. Nevertheless they are probably the most challenging components that have to be modeled due to both their complicated composition and the materials used in their manufacturing process.In particular, they are a crucial component for NVH finite element (FE) analyses since they are the only means of contact between road irregularities and the vehicle itself. Specifically, since FE simulations in the range 0-300 Hz are moving towards the so called “full-vehicle simulation”, it is fundamental to have a proper representation of this component to allow a proper description of the excitation coming from the road [ 1]. Tires provide indeed the first filtering of the forces deriving from the road asperities and transmit them to the suspension system. For these reasons, an adequate model of automotive tires must be able to give a sufficiently accurate estimation of the forces at the hub of the wheel. The solution used by tire suppliers consists usually in a very detailed FE model where every layer is modeled with solid elements. The drawback of a detailed FE model is that it requires a very high number of elements which make it impossible to be included in a full-vehicle simulation, since the numerical data and consequently the computational time would explode. Thus, to meet the conflicting needs of an accurate, yet relatively quick, simulation, a simplified model is somehow needed. Tire manufacturer usually provides the so called “modal models” to be included in roadnoise mission simulations, which are very easy to use and certified by the suppliers. Nevertheless, such models suf fer from an almost complete disconnection of their characteristics from the physical description of the tire, since both geometric and material characteristics are lost. This reflects in limiting the carmaker companies to be able to request only certain modal features to the supplier, with no link to the mechanics of the tire itself. The mentioned reasons, together with the need for a deeper understanding of the influence of tire characteristics on the vehicle acoustic performance, have motivated the activity presented in this paper which consisted in determining