On a highway trucks and cars driving side by side.
Source: Petra D-Colourbox.de
Nanotube structure on white background. Source: Colourbox.de
Through the European Green Car initiative a series of measures have already been taken to boost Research, Development and Innovation to increase global competitiveness for automotive industries with the deployment of new generations of trucks, buses and cars which are life and environment compliant. Today’s priorities for heavy duty vehicles are the efficiency of vehicles by energy management, aerodynamics and low rolling resistance, as well as eco-driving and innovative truck designs.
In line with this objective the Lorry project will contribute to a greener, safer and more efficient mobility in freight transport by combining a new tyre concept and a comprehensive tool for energy efficient heavy duty transportation. It has been established that tyre rolling resistance can account for as much as one third of the total fuel consumption of a truck, while the contribution is recognized to be at least one quarter in any case. The RR parameter cannot only be analyzed as a stand-alone parameter but is strongly correlated to other listed parameters. The Lorry-project thus proposes to study RR in its whole environment, and optimize truck fuel consumption by correlating it with tyre pressure, load, driving style, road and weather conditions.
The overall Lorry objective is to develop a new tyre concept allowing reaching a gain of 5% in truck fuel consumption, of 20% in tyre rolling resistance and of 20% in tyre wear reduction. These gains will be obtained without compromising tyre safety, wet grip and wear resistance. A virtual road performance measurement tool will also be developed to optimize and lean road transportation via heavy duty vehicle.
The project proposes improvements in tread pattern technology, material composition and processing in combination with enhanced characterization and simulation tools. Finally the tyre performance benefits will be directly demonstrated through experimentation but also complemented by virtual performance assessment tools. Research key challenges of the project are: understanding interaction between new tread pattern design and novel fillers in compounding, the simultaneous improvement of RR, wear and wet performance and the fine scale correlation to fuel consumption in function of driving and road parameters.
Within the project, an interdisciplinary consortium of experts in the fields of tyre technology, rubber and filler technology, nanotechnologies, composite physics, sensorics and transport and road infrastructure will deliver a new tyre concept with proven benefits via a full scale fleet road measurement campaign. A complete set of complementary scientific evaluation methods, risk analysis and profitability calculations are also part of the project to ensure its success. Different innovation outcomes of the Lorry-project can be highlighted as follows:
- new validated tyres including newtread pattern and material features for steer in 2 sizes and for trailer in 1
size, - new methodology for tyre deflection measurement and RR /wear/fracture fatigue predictive measurement,
- smart systems for tracking and ana-lyzing trucks driving and environ
mental conditions, - virtual analytical tool for optimization of trucks fuel consumption.
Project Results
On a highway trucks and cars driving side by side. Source: Petra D-Colourbox.de
Concerning the development of new tread pattern design, during reporting period, significantant improvements have been done especially regarding multizone compounding and regarding the possibility to keep truck tyre performance all along their lifetime (Wagan). Multizone has demonstrated +9% of improvement in RR combined with a much longer tyre durability when Wagan has shown a RR improvement of 5% combined with 20% improvement in Wet Grip (safety parameter). Concerning the development of advances nano-structured truck tyre compounds, the following activities have been achieved:
- selection of Tyre Body and Tread re-cipes for lab screening and reference, including a laboratory alignment between Goodyear and DIK;
- selection and characterization of raw materials: 4 types of new developed carbon blacks (CB) and 2 traditional types as reference, two types of silica, a silanization agent and MWCNT
- lab mixing process, optimization and development of new processes:
- MWCNT-rubber masterbatches pre-paration and MWCNT dust free hand ling solutions
- compound physical testing and structural characterization
- new carbon black grades scale up
- compound scale up and tyre building and testing.
Concerning the development of innovative predictive tools to enhance characterisation of materials and tyre performances, the main achievements during this first period are the following:
- asymmetric contact deformation oserved from on-board tyre sensor measurement;
- a powerful tool ready for upcoming tasks and rolling resistance reductions;
- as a prediction for rolling resistance, a new measurement method was de-veloped to calculate material behavior in a more realistic way;
- a comprehensive introduction into tear fatigue analysis and a presentation of the results;
- multi-scale characterization of wear patterns can be performed ex-situ on worn specimen. Concerning the field tests, they have not yet started; however, Novacom has started preparing for the road testing when actual new compounds will arrive (estimated October 2014). Indeed first, tire pressure monitoring hardware has been installed on assets in order to fine tune the measurement system,. Finally, the evaluation and the adjustment of the parameters of the real time measurements have been set-up through several teleconference meetings.
Concerning the development of a comprehensive tool for analysis and modelling of tyre performance (WP5), the following activities have been realised during the reported period:
investigation on the influence of climate factors, - study on Scandinavian type of road pavements with the aim to characterize macro- and micro-texture variations and to substantiate links to friction values,
- development of a fractal-spectral methodology has been developed and finalized to monitor changes in surface texture at different length scales,
- development of a method to reconstruct the driven routes on a detailed scale.
Potential Impact
New tyres developed in the framework of this project will show an improvement of 18 % minimum in rolling resistance. Fleet operator as well as truck manufacturers will get great advantages in having these tyres on their trucks and trailers: they will be environmental policies compliant, can set future standards and save money. Our combined integrated Tread pattern and material design reaches 20 % rolling resistance improvements for steer and trailer tyres in combination with a 10% wear improvement. In addition as we move to a silica enriched tread pattern we also are able to reach an improvement in wet braking performance in the range of 3 %. The hidden grove technology will lead to a change in the rib and grove design as well as the net to gross ratio in function of non-skid and thus we can reach a further very significant improvement in wet on partially worn tyres (as of half non-skid) of almost 20 %. The integrated technology approach will result in a 20/10 scale improvement of the most important environmental performance parameters of a tyre: RR and wear, resulting in a very significant life cycle impact reduction of the tyre over its use phase to which the RR improvement contributes with about a 5 times higher weighing factor than the mileage improvement.
Additionally, specifications will show high values for safety and longevity parameters as well, in parallel tyre price will be maintained at the market level thanks to the parallel weight reduction measures, providing tyres users with important competitive advantages.
To better prove the evolution and impact of RR for the developed tyres, a full scale fleet demonstration with full sensorics and telematics equipped trucks and tyre wheels will be performed measuring all relevant tyre vehicle driving parameters such as pressure, load, motional G factors or velocity. Telematics in combination with geo-localization will also permit real time fleet tracking and collection of the environmental impact parameters including road topology, road surface topography and climate conditions.
Simulation of tyre road performance in terms of RR and wear impact through a virtual measurement campaign tool will allow us making an assessment of tyre/vehicle and environmental parameters in a statistic data environment. By this way, LORRY will fully establish the interaction of road parameters with parameters of tyre and material design. The robustness of tyre engineering will be an important outcome as well as the capabilities for fine scale adaptation in function of the predominant use and environmental parameters. It will give an overview of tyre behavior over a broad range of type of driving and environmental parameters across Europe reducing the future need for time consuming and expensive road test campaigns. The ultimate outcome of the road demonstration and simulation WP 4 and 5 efforts will be a comprehensive tool relating fuel consumption to tyre parameters in combination with use and environmental parameters. The transportation factor will profit from the inherent safety and logistics benefits offered by sensorics and telematics and get a comprehensive calculation tool for controlling fuel efficiency and the related cost savings considering a full cost of ownership model for tyres.
Enabling experimental and virtual methodologies from WP3 will also enhance the fundamental understanding, bridge knowledge gaps between material and tyre design scales. This enhancement in predictive design at the macro scale of tyre design and micro scale of material design resulting in reliable structure property relationships which are validated through various development and simulation phases is essential. Indeed the road campaign simulation tool and the tyre and material simulation tools will lead to a gain in development cycle time of up to 2 years and in R&D resources allowing consortium member to deliver innovations in a shorter timeframe.
Project Partners – 11 partners from 7 EU countries
- Goodyear, Colmar Berg, Luxemburg, Benoit Duez, benoit_duez@goodyear.com
- Aalto-Korkeakoulusaatio, Aalto, Finland, Ari Tuononen, ari.tuononen@aalto.fi
- Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior De Investigaciones Cientificas, Madrid, Spain
- Antonio Figueras, vicyt@csic.es
- Centre De Recherches Routieres – Opzoekingscentrum Voor De Wegenbouw, Bruxelles, Belgium, Luc Goubert, L.Goubert@brrc.be
- Centre National De La Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France, Paul Sotta, paul.sotta-exterieur@eu.rhodia.com
- Deutsches Institut für Kautschuktechnologie, Hanover, Germany, Ulrich Giese, ulrich.giese@dikautschuk.de
- Ewals Cargo Care, Hmtegelen, The Netherlands, Bart Van Rens, bart.van.rens@nl.ewals.com
- Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Zur Foerderung Der Angewandten Forschung, Munic, Germany, Thomas Halfmann, thomas.halfmann@itwm.fraunhofer.de
- Leibniz-Institut Fur Polymerforschung Dresden, Dresden, Germany, Thomas Horst, horst@ipfdd.de
- Novacom Europe, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Johan Peijnenburg, johan.peijnenburg@novacom-europe.com
- Orion Engineered Carbons, Hanau, Germany, Andre Hasse, andre.hasse@orioncarbons.com
- The Project Figures, Budget: 3,62 M€ (2,62 M€ funded by EC), Duration: 3 years, started in November 2013
http://www.lorryproject.eu
