Continental adds driving simulator to tyre development arsenal

After months of fine-tuning and integrating into development processes, Continental has begun operations with its new driving simulator for tyres and aims to use it in particular to assist original equipment tyre development. Tyrepress recently visited the simulator to find out more.

Julian Kroeber is in charge of the driving simulator’s day-to-day operations, and upon introducing this latest addition to the Continental Contidrom facility in northern Germany, he related that simulation has not only become an increasingly important aspect of automotive development in recent times, during the past couple of years Continental has also simulated how virtual tyres behave together with virtual vehicles.

“But one thing we haven’t been able to do is replicate the subjective sense of driving, how the vehicle feels. Achieving a special kind of ‘feeling’ is very important to our customers, so I’m pleased that we are now bridging this gap with the driving simulator. We can feed the system with a virtual vehicle and virtual tyre that haven’t been built yet and gain a subjective evaluation from this. For this reason, we believe that our virtual development will be a game changer.”

The simulator is located at the 1967-opened Contidrom facility (Photo: Stephen Goodchild / Tyre Industry Publications Ltd)

Realistic road car simulations

Unlike the Automated Indoor Braking Analyzer (AIBA) facility that has aided testing at the Contidrom since 2012, the driving simulator is not a unique Continental development. The unit is a Delta S3 driver-in-the-loop simulator manufactured by UK-based firm Ansible Motion. Following installation at the Contidrom in the final week of April 2022, Continental spent over a year intensively testing the simulator prior to commencing the operational phase.

Kroeber tells us that the motion unit on the ground floor has 5 metres of lateral and 4 metres longitudinal travel distance, with the vehicle cabin sitting on a second motion base. Thanks to this extensive motion platform and a maximum acceleration of twelve metres per second or 1.2 G, 800° per second yaw and 1000° per second roll and pitch, test drivers experience all six degrees of freedom of the vehicle dynamics – just like in a real vehicle on a physical test track. “You can simulate all regular road cars here – these numbers will only be exceeded by a real-world race car.”

Saving time & resources

Julian Kroeber believes the driving simulator “offers clear opportunities” in a range of areas. “We can start tyre development much earlier, saving our customers a great deal of time. And each tyre we test virtually in this simulator need not be shipped around the world.” The simulator also provides a simply way to test new materials that are being used in a tyre for the first time.

“Virtual development methods enable us to offer solutions even more efficiently and more precisely tailored to the needs and requirements of our customers. Virtual test kilometres also play a major part in conserving valuable resources,” adds Bernd Korte, head of Passenger Tire Development for Continental’s original equipment business. “With our new driving simulator, we can shorten development times and minimise costs and the use of raw materials in production and logistics.”