Europe’s leading tire manufacturer, Continental, is using a new CT scanner to further improve tire prototype testing.

This new equipment is being set up in the research and development centre in Hanover. It greatly reduces the time needed to screen a tire and enhances the quality of the images taken during the process. Individual parts of the tire construction can be displayed separately, so that wear in individual parts of the casing can be tested, for example. Around 3,000 tires are to undergo testing each year.

Continental's team of specialists has been inspecting test tires using a computer tomography scanner for over ten years. This scanner allows individual materials contained in the tires to be displayed without damaging the tire and therefore supplements other options such as X-rays or visual inspections. The scan focuses on the distortion of reinforcing materials such as steel cords and their exact position in the tire. Tire distortion when cornering, braking and under heavy loads is also simulated and displayed.

The new equipment will increase the number of tires that can be screened in this way ten times. “We can now offer our tire developers a much greater capacity than before,” said Andre Baumgart, the project manager.

“As well as being able to analyse tires more quickly, the new scanner’s higher resolution is also a great advantage. We can also simulate realistic conditions such as wheel load, camber, drift, acceleration and braking torque and examine the effects these have on the different parts of the tire.”

This allows individual parts of the tire to be analysed in 3D and in the context of the tire as a whole. The previous equipment could only show individual sections or slices of the whole tire – now the technicians can see a 3D view of a larger area made up of several individual sections, previously a time-consuming task.

Continental is currently the only tire manufacturer able to inspect the effect of various loads on the bond between reinforcing materials and rubber with this level of precision.  Thanks to this, the tire developers in Hanover can construct their products to meet the most demanding requirements.

Courtesy: Continental AG

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Posted by Naresh Koshti on 2 May, 2009 12:56:52 PM IST #