Tyre pressure mapping offers the F1 engineer the possibility of seeing, measuring and recording the footprint in 2D or 3D under different loading conditions quickly and easily. XSensor’s high-speed Tyre Pressure Mapping system also offers tyre and chassis engineers the possibility of measuring the tyre footprint, dynamically at speed of up to 140kph. Unfortunately, teams are prohibited from measuring the tyre footprint in this way. Therefore, any measurements are made on a static test rig.
The design of the test rig will vary but will have the following elements;
- An axial to mount a wheel and tyre assembly
- A means of applying a known force to the tyre’s contact patch
- A method of measuring the force being applied, normally a load cell
- A method of adjusting the camber angle
- A method of inflating and varying tyre inflation pressure
- A tyre pressure mapping system capable of viewing, recording and measuring the tyre footprint
- An axial to mount a wheel and tyre assembly
- A means of applying a known force to the tyre’s contact patch
- A method of measuring the force being applied, normally a load cell
- A method of adjusting the camber angle
- A method of inflating and varying tyre inflation pressure
- A tyre pressure mapping system capable of viewing, recording and measuring the tyre footprint
A force is applied to the tyre’s contact patch while the pressure mapping system records the tyre footprint, frame by frame. Data collected includes a 2D or 3D image of the contact area, peak and average pressure, contact patch size, estimated load and more as the tyre is loaded to the chosen peak force then unloaded.
This process is repeated for both the front and rear tyres over several chosen loads and often several different inflation pressures. The data can then be viewed as it’s recorded, saved and exported as PNG, JPG or AVI files. Individual frames, groups of frames or complete data sets can be exported as CSVs for import into another software package to be combined with other data for further analysis.
