Sandia Labs and Goodyear develop means to test tires before they’re built

Albuquerque, NM (KKOB) — Simulating how a tire’s tread, rubber and size respond to a road’s corners, angles and hills, Sandia National Laboratories and The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. have developed a virtual means of showing a tire’s performance before the first prototypes are ever built.

Computer simulations test a virtual tire on a virtual test machine that simulates actual road conditions. Thus, the Virtual Flat Trac reduces the need for actual tires to be tested on Goodyear’s actual Flat Trac machines in Akron, Ohio, or Colmar-Berg, Luxembourg, said Michael Skroch, Sandia’s manager of Simulation Modeling Sciences.

Source: KKOB News Radio