Sumitomo Rubber Industries (SRI) has announced plans to open a technical center in western New York to support its design, product testing and innovation activities within the North and South American automotive tire market.

The technical center in Getzville will employ approximately 40 engineers and professionals as part of SRI America (SRIA), a subsidiary of SRI. Ten other employees will be based at SRIA’s test track in Huntsville, Alabama.

The SRIA technical center will support research and development activities for passenger, motorcycle and light truck tires for original equipment manufacturers and replacement market customers. Operations will include technical benchmarking, product design, simulation and analysis, materials development and on-vehicle testing.

Continue reading Sumitomo Rubber Industries to open technical center in New York at Tire Technology International.

rFpro and Siemens Digital Industries Software (Siemens) have jointly developed a simulation capability that integrates Siemens’ Simcenter Tire software with rFpro’s TerrainServer, which provides a millimeter-accurate digital model of the road surface.

The interface enables the MF-Tyre and MF-Swift models in Simcenter Tire to directly interrogate rFpro’s TerrainServer surface data and calculate tire forces and moments for vehicle models. It enables accurate simulations of how a tire interacts with the road, a key requirement in virtual testing for both automotive and motorsport development.

rFpro and Siemens collaborated to ensure reliable performance across desktop, cloud and real-time simulations.

Continue reading Tire-road simulation solution released by Siemens and rFpro   at Tire Technology International.

Nexen Tire has established a high-dynamic driving simulator at its central research institute, The Nexen UniverCity, in Seoul, South Korea. The simulator is the first of its kind in the Korean tire industry and is intended to support tire research and development using VR and AI technologies.

The simulator enables testing of acceleration, steering response, braking and other performance metrics in a variety of driving conditions. Nexen Tire said it expects to minimize unnecessary trial and error, reduce prototype production and real vehicle testing and accelerate innovation while cutting costs.

The company also expects the simulator to support faster and more accurate alignment with original equipment (OE) requirements, and strengthen collaboration in developing tires for new concepts and high-performance vehicles.

Continue reading Nexen Tire introduces driving simulator to accelerate tire development at Tire Technology International.

Bridgestone has invested in a new driver-in-the-loop (DIL) simulator at its EMEA R&D Center near Rome in Italy. Complementing its virtual tire development (VTD) capabilities, the new simulator will enable Bridgestone to combine tire and vehicle simulations with AI technologies.

Bridgestone has used VTD for a decade. Having its own simulator will enable engineers to virtually recreate tire behavior, vehicle interaction and response in various conditions. With the help of AI, this combination supports faster assessment of many design options, accelerating development toward targets.

The new simulator will help Bridgestone boost innovation, increase speed to market and improve development efficiency.

Continue reading Bridgestone advances virtual tire development with its driving simulator at Tire Technology International.

Sumitomo Rubber Industries has developed a new technique to predict noise generated by the combined vibration of tires and vehicles.

This method uses a tire rolling motion simulation and aims to assist both tire and vehicle manufacturers in reducing the noise produced by their products, to improve passenger comfort and simplify development processes by reducing the need for physical prototypes.

The new method simplifies the prediction of road noise performance by coupling the vibration characteristics of the tire and vehicle using the transfer function synthesis method, which is more accessible than sensitive vehicle information. It should also reduce the need for tests with actual vehicles and prototype tires.

Continue reading Sumitomo Rubber Industries develops tire noise prediction technique at Tire Technology International.

The Virtual Tire Lab has been launched by Smithers, a provider of testing, consulting, information and compliance services, and Stackpole Engineering Services, which specializes in tire and vehicle development technology.

Virtual Tire Lab is toolset for analyzing raw data and comparing, contrasting and adjusting virtual tire models for use in design analysis, simulation and model certification.

It uses an annual subscription model to provide clients with access to a library of passenger and light truck tire models, which includes a variety of popular brands, sizes and categories such as all-weather, all-season and EV-specific tires. Further models will be added to the Lab library during the subscription period. 

Continue reading Smithers and Stackpole launch tire modeling toolset at Tire Technology International.

On March 26, the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company officially opened its simulation center in Luxembourg purposed for tire design and development. This follows the launch of the inaugural center in Akron, Ohio, in 2021.

Outfitted with a DiM250 dynamic driving simulator developed by VI-grade, the center is designed to enhance Goodyear’s collaboration with OEMs and support tire performance through personalized product development.

Back in 2020, Goodyear purchased two driving simulators from VI-grade.

Using a virtual tire development process, the new center will test and validate tire models for vehicle prototypes to enable a speedier production process for tire modifications.

Continue reading Goodyear opens simulation center in Luxembourg to enhance tire development process at Tire Technology International.

Close collaboration between Goodyear and Maserati has led to development of a bespoke tire for the different versions of the new GranTurismo. Goodyear’s Eagle F1 SuperSport, part of the tire maker’s ultra-ultra-high-performance range, has been developed to suit the characteristics of the new Maserati models, and will be marked with MGT.

Virtual simulation was used to develop the tires for the GranTurismo. This simulation helped reduce the number of prototype tires required, streamlining the design and development process. The move away from multiple iterations of physical prototype tires also improves cost and efficiency, due to the huge amount of data that can be collected using virtual R&D methods.

Continue reading Goodyear develops bespoke UUHP tire for 2023 Maserati GranTurismo at Tire Technology International.

Simulation software specialist rFpro says it is integrating third-party tire model suppliers directly into its road surface model software, Terrain Server. By providing highly detailed road surface data it hopes to help motorsport teams develop more advanced tire models.

“The tire is the only part of a race car connected to the road,” said Matt Daley, rFpro operations director. “For motorsport teams, optimizing the tires is critical to reducing lap times. Using a more advanced tire model during simulations provides a better understanding of the tire behavior and improves correlation with the real world.”

A tire model is made up of two elements: the contact patch model and the dynamics and force calculations.

Continue reading rFpro opens up road surface simulation software to third-party tire model suppliers at Tire Technology International.

Michelin is about to see the race debut in the FIA World Endurance Championship of its racing tire for the newly created Le Mans Hypercar class – a tire that was developed almost entirely virtually.

These cars are very different to their predecessors, weighing in at a hefty 1,030kg (compared to approximately 870kg for the previous LMP1 class) and the manufacturer has had to accommodate both rear-wheel drive only and all-wheel drive platforms (with hybrid systems in the latter case).

“The development of these tires was something of a challenge,” observed Pierre Alves, manager of Michelin’s WEC program.

Continue reading Michelin’s latest racing tire developed almost entirely virtually at Tire Technology International.