Skip to main content
Case Study: Verifying Tire Contact Loss During Extreme Cornering
Industry: Automotive / Tire Testing
Application: Dynamic Tire Contact Patch Analysis under Shear Forces
Partner: Calspan
What Happens to Tire Contact at the Edge of Performance?
At high speeds and under extreme lateral loads, tire behavior becomes complex – and often unpredictable. Calspan, a leading provider of vehicle testing services for the automotive, aerospace, and defense industries, set out to explore exactly how shear foces affect tire contact with the road
Using Tekscan’s High Speed TireScan system, Calspan captured real-time pressure data during an aggressive cornering test. The findings revealed a phenomenon that would have been difficult to detect using traditional methods.
Unexpected Data from a 9 kN Shear Force Test
Calspan conducted a test using Tekscan’s High Speed TireScan system on a tire subjected to 9 kN of lateral shear force during a high-speed cornering maneuver. The system captured high resolution real-time dynamic pressure distribution across the contact patch. The High Speed TireScan™ system revealed a distinct gap in pressure within the contact patch, suggesting that a portion of the tread had lifted off the road surface.
Calspan engineers hypothesized that the lateral force caused the tire’s belt package to buckle, causing this loss of contact. To validate, they synchronized the High Speed TireScan™ data with thermal video footage. The thermal data showed a lower surface temperature in the region with missing pressure - indicating a lack of frictional heating, and confirming that the tread was not in contact with the road.
A New Layer of Insight
By combining high-resolution high-speed pressure mapping with thermal imaging, Calspan was able to:
- Detect a tread-lift condition under high cornering loads
- Validate their hypotheses with quantifiable data
- Gain a deeper understanding of tire design and performance behavior under stress
“… the High-Speed TireScan system has continued to provide new insights into a range of different tire phenomena. From high-speed testing of motorsports tires to detailed analysis of passenger car tires, up to high load testing of large semi-truck tires, the results have all been very valuable. We know that because people keep coming back for more data after their initial test results.” – Henning Olsson, Sr. Director, Technology at Calspan
Read the Full White Paper Here!
This case highlights just one example of how advanced pressure mapping can uncover critical tire performance data. To explore these findings and more:
[Download the Full White Paper below]
