Every brake programme starts with an inertia dynamometer. The brake dyno simulates vehicle mass with flywheels or electric inertia, so engineers can run hundreds of stops under controlled pressure, speed and temperature without a prototype car.

A typical dyno leg for a passenger car brake covers 3 procedures:

• SAE J2522, better known as the AK Master, maps friction coefficient across green, bedded, speed and pressure sensitivity, fade and recovery sections

• SAE J2521 runs the squeal noise matrix for brake NVH

• SAE J2784 replicates the FMVSS 135 vehicle test sequence on the dyno so engineers can predict the track result before booking a car

Each run produces friction curves, rotor and pad temperatures, pressure traces and wear measurements. A clean AK Master result is the first baton.

Those 3 procedures rarely share a cell. Performance dynos and NVH dynos with acoustic enclosures are usually separate machines, sometimes in separate buildings. A single pad lot gets split across them, and the split needs its own record: which sets went to J2522, which went to J2521 and which were held back for the track. Lose that allocation and a pad set that squealed on the noise dyno can end up fitted to the prototype car.

The dyno has its own failure mode, and it rarely involves the dyno. A global OEM running multi cell powertrain testing lived with it for years: a test cell down for one missing part. Brake labs know the feeling well. The cell is free, the operator is ready and the caliper adapter or the correct rotor batch is still in a box at goods inwards.

That lab fixed it by modelling each cell as configurable equipment with its fixtures, adapters and capabilities attached. A booking only confirms when the parts it depends on are actually in inventory. For a brake dyno, that means the pad lot, rotor, caliper and adapter plate are all checked in before the slot locks. Every hour a cell sits idle waiting for a fixture adds to the real cost of an idle test rig, and brake dynos are expensive rigs to leave cold.

The dyno engineer has a passing AK Master. The track engineer needs to fit the same brake to a prototype and run FMVSS 135 or ECE R13-H at the proving ground.

Here is what the baton has to carry:

• Pad formulation and lot number

• Rotor part number and the exact rotor paired with those pads on the dyno

• Burnish state, because a dyno bedded pad and a fresh pad behave differently on the first stops

• Dyno friction summary with expected fade onset temperature

• Thermocouple positions used on the dyno so the track can mirror them

• Any deviations from the dyno procedure

In most labs that baton is an email with a PDF attached. The pad lot is in the PDF. The rotor pairing is in the technician's notebook. Nobody wrote down that the dyno run used an alternate caliper because the production part was late.

Then the track result comes in 8% off the dyno prediction and two teams spend a week arguing about correlation when the real cause was a hardware swap at the handoff.

A test article record that travels with the parts closes this zone. The pad set, rotor and caliper carry their identities, their dyno history and their burnish state from one station to the next. The track engineer opens the same record the dyno engineer closed.

FMVSS 135 is the US standard for light vehicle brake systems. The vehicle goes through a burnish of 200 stops from 80 km/h, then cold effectiveness, high speed, fade and recovery, partial failure and parking brake tests. The cold effectiveness stop from 100 km/h has to come in within 70 m. ECE R13-H covers the same ground for UN markets. Aftermarket pad makers face ECE R90, which compares replacement pads against the original equipment.

Track time at a proving ground is booked in blocks and shared with ride and handling, ADAS, durability and NVH programmes. Weather cancels slots. Prototypes break. A brake programme that slips a day can lose a week waiting for the next open block on the braking surface.

Proving grounds carry their own version of the relay problem. Before moving to TITAN, an independent proving ground ran on bookings that did not talk to billing, PO limits missed until after the fact and asset tracking on paper. A brake programme that overruns its track block lands squarely in that gap. The customer finds out about the overrun when the invoice arrives. Connecting track bookings to billing and assets in one live system lets the programme manager see the PO burn while the car is still on the surface.

The track engineer now holds stopping distances, pedal forces, deceleration traces, brake temperatures, ambient conditions, vehicle test mass and tyre details. The report author needs all of it alongside the dyno data from Leg 1.

This zone fails quietly. Track data sits on a logger laptop. Dyno data sits on the dyno PC. The report author copies values into a template by hand and a transcription error turns a 68 m stop into 63 m. Nobody catches it until a reviewer cross checks the raw file, if anyone does.

Brake reports for homologation or a customer sign off also need the procedure revision used at each station. A track run against one revision of the internal test method and a dyno run against another cannot be presented as one programme without a deviation note. Holding every brake procedure as a controlled entry in a test catalog means each test record points at the exact revision it ran.

A brake test report that survives review ties the chain together in one place. It shows the dyno friction map, the predicted track performance, the measured track result and the gap between them, all linked to the same test articles.

Reviewers tend to check 4 things first: that the test articles match across stations, that every instrument was in calibration on the day, that track ambient conditions fell inside the procedure limits and that each deviation carries a sign off. A report that answers those 4 on its first page saves a full review cycle.

Automated test report generation pulls values straight from the dyno and track records into the report template, which removes the hand copy step where most transcription errors start. The multi cell OEM lab now runs this way, with one platform carrying every test from plan to report.

Euro 7 adds a new runner to the relay. From 29 November 2026, newly type approved passenger cars in the EU must meet a brake particle emission limit of 7 mg/km, or 3 mg/km for pure electric cars. The test runs under UN GTR 24 on an enclosed brake dyno driven through the WLTP brake cycle, measuring both particle mass and particle number.

That puts a brake emissions dyno leg alongside the performance dyno, the noise dyno and the track. Same pads, same rotors, one more changeover zone. Labs that already struggle to hand off between 2 stations will find 4 stations much harder.

A brake programme is only as fast as its slowest handoff. The dyno can be world class and the track can be booked months ahead, and the programme will still stall if the pad lot, the rotor pairing or the procedure revision gets lost between them.

Labs that finish on time treat every changeover as a test step in its own right, with a record the next team can open and trust. On a connected chassis testing platform, the baton never leaves the system, so it never hits the ground