New High-Speed Tire Pressure Sensor System

For over 15 years, the world’s leading tire manufacturers have relied on XSENSOR’s tire-pressure imaging for R&D and Testing.  In response to customer demand, XSENSOR’s latest innovation in tire footprint testing brings our state of the art accuracy and repeatability to dynamic testing.   These sensors are fully portable and can capture high resolution full tire contact patch at highway speeds.

XSENSOR developed a complete turn-key system consisting of accurate, ultra-high-speed tire sensor, modular signal processing electronics and data logging capability.  The system can be set up at the test track in under 30 min. The accompanying software provides powerful image processing and analysis tools. The result is the fastest, most responsive and accurate tire pressure imaging sensor system available.

Dynamic tire pressuring imaging today commonly relies on a camera integrated into the test track. There’s a room below the track surface with a glass plate that the vehicle drives over. These systems are developed in-house and are custom built or proprietary.

 

The problems with the way high speed tire pressure is measured today are that there are no standards to compare against; the location of testing is fixed; the system is expensive with a long set-up/calibration process and for accurate reading, vehicle speed is limited.

For tire design and test engineers, XSENSOR designed a portable, high-speed pressure imaging system capable of capturing accurate, high-resolution tire contact patch pressure distribution measurements at over 140 km/h.  High-pressure sensors are low profile, so they can be easily implemented in drive testing scenarios. High speed tire footprint measurements are reliable and durable for repeated use in a test track environment.

Our HS Pro V8 software provides specific tools for tire designers to attain contact patch measurement and calculations used to generate groove area calculations and tread pattern contact. Testers can view live or post-process, then analyze the data in the full featured Pro V8 software. Recordings can be triggered remotely and synchronized with other high-speed data acquisition devices, allowing you to fully evaluate test scenarios and compare designs and modifications.

Building on XSENSOR’s established, static, tire-pressure measurement system, we developed the ability to dynamically capture a tire tread image for high interface pressures ranging between 15 psi and 500 psi. Our high-resolution pressure sensors have proven themselves to be accurate and reliable through the entire calibration range. Calibration is maintained thanks to capacitive technology and the unique high response materials used to make these sensors.

Unlike current mechanical systems that capture a strip of data, our sensors detect multiple frames of data at over 140 km/h

Generating quality data, our sensors record at over 450 frames per second and provide accurate, high-resolution pressure distributions during dynamic tire analysis, cornering and suspension kinematic testing.

Sample 1: Comparing inflation pressure in dynamic test (55 psi rear)

Sample 2: Comparing inflation in dynamic test (35 psi rear)

XSENSOR’s new high-speed tire pressure imaging system can capture 4 complete tire footprints in a pass at 90 mph (145 km/h).

In validation testing, we accurately and repeatably measured differences in the contact area as well as the average pressures for various tires at different speeds and air pressures. We collected data in cornering up to 30 mph and contact patch and pressure data capturing suspension kinematics at 15 mph after the tire passed over a bump approx. 2-2.5 inches tall.

The mobility of the system, fast set-up, reliability and repeatability of measurements means that multiple test scenarios can be easily executed in a track day.  The sensor and data collection electronics are fully modular to ensure valuable track time is never lost.  Fast set-up (less than 30 minutes) means shorter test windows can be accommodated for weather changes.  Repeatability and accuracy of the measurements ensure consistency of test data taken across multiple locations.

For more information on XSENSOR’s new high-speed tire pressure system, please contact us at sales@xsensor.com.