Winter tires gain more and more attention due to safety reasons. The customers need on more traffic safety results in an increasing effort of the tire industry to improve the winter tire characteristics. With the help of a deep understanding of the dominating rubber-ice friction mechanisms new tires can be engineered costeffectively. The understanding of the relevant friction mechanisms can be gained from basic tests on the one hand but also from simulations on the other hand. This thesis deals with the investigation of sliding tire tread blocks on ice. With the help of a high speed linear test rig the rubber-ice friction is investigated in depth. With the help of the total initial reflection the contact area of sliding tire tread blocks on ice is visualized. The observed phenomena are described and the influences are explained. Based on these investigations a detailed model of the sliding tire tread block is derived. It is validated with measurements carried out in a wide parameter range. Methods for optimizing the tire tread block ice friction are presented. In a second step different analytical models are presented which are all capable to simulate sliding tire tread blocks. The suitability of Euler-Bernoulli and Timoshenko beam theory for modeling a sliding tire tread block is analyzed also. Basic simulations are done and the models are validated with different measurements.