The finite element analysis of tires has been conventionally performed by either neglecting tread pattern or modeling only circumferential grooves. Besides, the tire analysis has been mainly limited to static or steady state rolling analysis. In this paper, a transient dynamic analysis of a patterned tire rolling over a cleat with an explicit finite element program is presented. The patterned tire with detailed tread blocks is modeled by a systematic mesh generation procedure, in which tire body and tread pattern meshes are separately generated in the beginning and then both meshes are combined by the tie constraint method. The cleat impact analysis is conducted by using both the patterned tire and the smooth tire models to predict the cleat enveloping characteristics. It is seen that the analysis results of the patterned tire model are in a good agreement with the experimental results.