Goodyear inaugurates tyre Simulation Center for OEM customers
Goodyear’s Simulation Center in Luxembourg reduces the number of physical tyres required during the development process (Photo: Stephen Goodchild / Tyre Industry Publications Ltd)
More than a year after completing and commissioning its Simulation Center in Luxembourg, The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company officially opened the facility yesterday. Tyrepress.com was present to see and experience this “new era for tyre design and development,” and will cover this in detail soon.
Established with an overall investment of around 6 million euros and outfitted with a DiM250 DYNAMIC Driving Simulator developed by VI-grade, the centre is designed to enhance Goodyear’s collaboration with OEMs and support tyre performance through personalised product development.
Utilising a virtual tyre development process, the Goodyear tyre development team can use the Simulation Center to test and validate tyre models for car models that do not yet exist. This allows for speedier production and ensures that tyre modifications can be made in the development process to suit the vehicle’s needs.
With the Simulation Center, Goodyear aims to achieve first-to-approval for all development tyres with only one physical iteration. The tyre maker calculates that working with just a single physical prototype tyre will enable savings of 13,000 tyres and 97,500 kilometres of physical tyre testing annually.
Shaping the future of mobility
“The opening of our industry-leading Simulation Center in Luxembourg displays Goodyear’s commitment to investing in and shaping the future of mobility,” says Romain Hansen, vice president EMEA Product Development at Goodyear. “Our virtual tyre development team has run numerous projects to date with the leading OEMs from Europe, the US and China.
“Once the automotive engineers experience our virtual development process, they acknowledge both the potential business and possible sustainability impacts.”
Simulation Center test drivers work with authentic sights, sounds and sensations (Photo: Stephen Goodchild / Tyre Industry Publications Ltd)
Centres in Luxembourg & USA
The establishment of the Simulation Center in Luxembourg follows the launch of a similarly-equipped centre in the USA in 2021. After a successful inaugural project with Maserati to produce bespoke tyres for the Gran Turismo 2023, the Simulation Center is supporting Goodyear on developing tailor-made tyres for OEMs across the world.
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