Despite it being an integral element of driving, tyres aren’t generally given much thought, beyond understanding that they’re needed for moving a vehicle about. Once they are contemplated or given thought, it’s normally throughout the purchase experience, with price – and sometimes performance – normally helping to define the choice.
The thing is, tyres aren’t sexy, and unless you’re into vulcanised rubber or an anorak, ‘black donuts’ aren’t exactly an incredible subject to pore over. Assuming that you just do attempt to, a wall of jargon pitching the technical excellence of the tyre is normally all that you could have to base your pick on. That, and a snazzy or aggressive tread pattern to sight, which typically seals the deal for a lot of.
There’s obviously much science – and testing – behind every good tyre, but in virtually all cases, you’ll should take whatever is pitched on faith, finally only knowing how good – or bad – it’s after the actual fact, when it’s in your automobile and the miles pile on. Unlike cars, you actually can’t try before you purchase.
Which is why reputable tyre makers put their money where their mouth is by organising tyre evaluation sessions. After all, it will probably be argued that subjective testing is empirical, but sometimes, the facts do shine through, and really evidently.
Working example, the Continental UltraContact UX7, which was introduced in Malaysia in April ahead of a mid-year market debut. Some months back, the German tyre maker (well, it is definitely greater than that when it comes to scope and breadth, but let’s just think about the core it is thought for by most) offered the possibility to sample the brand new tyre in Germany as part of a bigger insight into the corporate’s portfolio and workings.
Before we get to that, a recap of the tyre. The UltraContact UX7 is an SUV-dedicated tyre that essentially takes over from the UC6 SUV. Offered in sizes starting from 15 to 22 inches, the maker says the UX7 has been specifically developed and optimised with the SUV drivers’ needs in mind, meeting their demands for each urban commutes and casual off-road trips.
The main target is on safety, durability and calmness, as indicated by the product pitch. That is led by its X-Force Macroblocks, which maximise the tyre’s contact patch for higher handling and stability, while the tyre’s Adaptive Diamond Compound incorporates a special formula with silica that enhances the transformation of kinetic energy into heat at optimum levels, leading to shorter braking distances on each wet and dry roads, in line with the corporate.
Elsewhere, an Aqua Channel feature also quickly drains water through a singular tube system into the tread grooves, accelerating water evacuation. For those occasions when exploration goes off the beaten path, the UltraContact UX7 can also be ready for that, with its Robust360 construction features a reinforced steel belt that strengthens the tyre to soak up shocks from the road, enhancing shape retention and direction stability.
It also contains a sturdier carcass design, which reduces the chance of tyre damage, while polymer chains of Diamond Compound form a rigidly-interlocked network, improving the tyre’s wear performance to avoid cut and chip damage.
In keeping with the tyre maker, this allows enhanced durability and an extended use life to higher withstand the heavier weight and cargo of an SUV throughout various city life conditions, including the occasional off-road tour. Finally, keeping noise in check is a precision-cut tread design and the adoption of Noisebreaker 3.0 technology, which breaks up sound waves to stop noise from increase and intruding into the cabin.
A fast little bit of trivia, as highlighted throughout the presentation for it – the UX7 has a tailor-made fit for vehicles, depending on class and weight. Smaller sizes throughout the range are geared toward providing enhanced driving comfort, while larger sizes going into the UHP segment has the design being adapted for a sportier performance.
As you’d expect, the technology that has been poured into it does make for an advancement over the UC6 SUV in a lot of areas. While mileage and wet handling performance remain equal to the older tyre, dry handling and dry braking in addition to fuel efficiency have gained a noticeable improvement, and there’s a major jump from the UC6 SUV when it comes to wet braking and noise performance.
Although the first plug of the invitation was for the tyre, the test session for the UX7 at an ADAC test facility in Hannover didn’t run the entire gamut of usual side-by-side evaluations reminiscent of that done for the MaxContact MC7 in Australia last 12 months, because there was quite a bit else to indicate. Nonetheless, two running tests for it were done, the second highlighting considered one of its performance improvements very noticeably.
The primary, a wet cornering test, involved driving a VW Tiguan on a downhill trajectory section before going right into a wet patch right into a returning radius corner. Here, the UX7 kept traction and remained poised even with speed inputs going past 60 km/h. There was an absence of a control tyre, which for the second test was the UC6, since the subjective performance here would have been concerning the same, it was explained.
Despite the relatively short shift, it was actually possible to discern that the UX7 was that bit quieter when rolling back to the beginning of the wet braking test station. Uniformly, all of the mules were Audi Q3s, each for the UX7 and UC6, and in-car measuring equipment logged braking distances from 80 km/h to zero (counting it only from 80 km/h to halt when the brake pedal was stomped, independent of approach speed). Every driver got two runs on each tyres.
With the UC6, the Q3 took 33.46 metres (the common over two runs) to stop with my co-driver behind the wheel, while my average reading was 33.57 metres. On the UX7, the space dropped significantly – my co-driver managed 26.64 metres, while mine was 26.38 metres, but the common across all of the samplings from the drivers in our group were throughout the same zone.
While seven metres doesn’t sound like much, it truly is within the grand scheme of all things braking, especially more so if you happen to take a look at it from the pedestrian context, where the difference in distance could mean an enormous scare or a possible fatality. And so, big plus marks here.
It really would have been interesting to explore the opposite parameters of the UX7 in associated tests, but the necessity to present things with a bigger intent meant that there was all to it with the brand new tyre. As such, the test set at ADAC shuffles on to a different wet handling test, of evasion and control with the WinterContact TS 870 P on the Module X test.
The method is easy enough, with a kick plate pushing the automobile right into a skid upon approach right into a wet, low-friction surface section, the driving force needing to correct trajectory while avoiding random water jet partitions serving as obstacles. While we’re not going to see the WC coming our way, the sampling showed that it does offer good levels of control (depending on driver skill, after all) tackling such conditions. Also highlighted on the ADAC test centre was the CrossContact AX6 all-terrain tyre.
The actual meat, nevertheless, was on the Contidrom, the pearl of the corporate’s tyre division. One of the vital technologically advanced test tracks on the earth, the place has grow to be the popular tyre testing facility for brands everywhere in the world since its inception, testing greater than 1.3 million tyres over the past 50 years.
Covering a complete area of 160 hectares, which is roughly the dimensions of 220 football fields, the proving ground covers every conceivable need around tyre testing and has welcomed many shoppers within the automotive world. We get two driving tests at the power and a tour of other happenings here, all geared toward highlighting the corporate’s extensive and dynamic testing expertise that assures and enhances the security, performance and quality of each Continental tyre.
The primary of the 2 tyre tests was again a wet handling one, with the MaxContact MC7. This was achieved on VW GTI examples in lead-follow fashion over a 1.8 km-long track with loads of mixed radius corners, the test geared toward showcasing the MC7’s aquaplaning resistance and cornering performance on a consistently low-friction and wet terrain. The APAC-dedicated sports tyre did thoroughly, its level of grip and predictability allowing the cars to hold a good turn of speed across the section over repeated runs.
The opposite road test involved dry handling with the SportContact SC7. The showcase, made with performance-oriented evaluators reminiscent of the BMW M3 and Audi RS3, aimed to spotlight how the tyre would perform being driven hard across the section, intended to simulate a standard dry, European country road.
The rain made work of it for the primary group, but by the point we get to the station, conditions had improved, and we got to belt the cars around on what was a reasonably dry track, again in lead-follow fashion. The RS3 I ended up in made short work of all the things, and while there’s no denying that the SC7 is a excellent tyre, it was the Audi’s ability to answer inputs cleanly and sharply that impressed – it really is sort of a automobile.
That done, we moved on to the tyre maker’s dynamic driving simulator, which is able to calculating exact driving dynamics parameters for tyres and the test vehicle. Designed to offer Continental’s skilled test drivers with the identical subjective driving impressions as tyre tests on the actual test track, the system, based around an Ansible Motion Delta series S3 Driver-in-the-Loop (DIL) simulator, is sort of the tech marvel.
With five by 4 metres of lateral and longitudinal travel and the power to do incredibly rapid roll, pitch and yaw movements, the simulator – which houses a VW Passat B8 interior within the cabin – works with a 3 metre tall, nine metre wide, 270 degree curved screen running with five 4K projectors and VICarRealTime and IPG Carmaker simulation software to create what really is the perfect gaming console rig.
In it, test drivers run tyre tests as they might in the actual world, over a small series of test courses (lidar scanned and digitised Contidrom, the IDIADA and Nurburgring over a ten km distance). The target is to shorten the event periods for tyres (by as much as three months) through such testing, with simulators reminiscent of this one in a position to predict the subjective dynamic behaviour of vehicles and tyres with high precision.
Elsewhere, the aspect of comfort was provided through a sampling involving acoustics, as in how noise is measured and addressed in tyre development, each within the lab and, on this occasion, on the road, the latter done with assistance from an array of sound measurement equipment inside test mules.
The tour also took us to the Automated Indoor Braking Analyzer (AIBA), a one-of-a-kind facility at Contidrom that enables the brake performance of tyres fitted to totally automated driverless vehicles to be tested on different road surfaces all year-round, whatever the weather. Here, as much as 100,000 brake tests will be performed annually.
The event also saw a visit to the corporate’s R&D centre in Stocken, where certain processes were shown. This included its non-destructive testing tyre evaluation, wherein X-ray, computer tomography and interferometry are used to support tyre development process without destroying the tyres, and its tyre carving department, where existing cured tyres are modified by carving of additional grooves by hand or robot. In all, loads of science behind all of it, despite the topic not being the sexiest to pitch.
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This Article First Appeared At paultan.org
