A compound engineer reads tire test data looking for causes. When an endurance test fails at step 6 on the drum, a pass or fail flag tells them almost nothing. They need the inspection notes from every interval, the photographs of the shoulder blister at step 4, the drum temperature trace and the build details of that exact tire.

Telemetry fills in what happened between inspections. A modern endurance drum logs load, speed and inflation pressure continuously, and many labs add infrared sensors on the shoulder and tread or in-tire sensors that record temperature and acceleration. A slow pressure loss or a shoulder temperature climbing 15°C in the hour before failure often explains a blister better than any photograph. Telemetry only helps when it stays linked to the tire, the step and the inspection notes from the same run.

That evidence is usually the first thing lost. Endurance and high speed tests under FMVSS 139 or UN R30 run for hours, and technicians record observations on paper sheets beside the drum. The sheet gets scanned weeks later, or never. The CSV from the drum controller ends up in a different folder with a different naming convention, and the telemetry file lands somewhere else again.

Automating the durability workflow closes most of those gaps:

• Step sequencing. The drum controller runs the load and speed steps defined in FMVSS 139 or UN R30 directly from the test method, which removes manual setpoint entry between steps.

• Automatic stop limits. Thresholds on pressure loss, shoulder temperature and vibration stop the drum before a failure destroys the evidence.

• Inspection prompts. The system prompts the technician at each scheduled interval with a digital checklist, so no inspection gets skipped on a long night run.
• Photo capture at the drum. Photographs attach to the test record the moment they are taken, tagged with the step and the time.
• Automatic file collection. Drum controller logs and telemetry files move into the test record as they are written, under the same tire and test ID.

Six months later the same engineer wants to know whether bead area failures cluster around one compound family. Pulling that answer from paper sheets and scattered CSV files costs someone a full week. With observations, telemetry and step data held together, the same question becomes a search.

Labs that log observations straight into the test record at the drum give compound engineers a searchable failure history. An electronic lab notebook tied to each test turns 3 years of endurance work into evidence a development team can mine.

Force and moment testing produces the richest data in a tire programme. A flat belt machine sweeps slip angle, slip ratio, camber, vertical load and inflation pressure, often at several speeds. Engineers fit the results to a Pacejka Magic Formula or a similar tire model, and vehicle makers drop those models into ride and handling simulations.

The vehicle dynamics engineer trusts the model only as far as they trust the conditions behind it. Inflation pressure, tread state, belt surface and speed all shape the curve, and a model fitted at 2.2 bar behaves differently from one fitted at 2.5 bar. Those details often live in a file header or, worse, in the filename. Once the fitted parameter file travels to the customer, the link back to the raw measurement breaks.

Electric vehicles make this harder. Heavier vehicles and instant torque push tire makers to test wider load ranges and more compounds per programme, and vehicle makers now ask for richer force and moment datasets to tune their models. More sweeps per tire means more files per programme and more ways for a model to lose its source.

Two habits keep that link intact. Test conditions belong in structured metadata stored with the file. The fitted model, the raw sweep data and the original test request belong in one linked record so anyone can walk back from model to measurement. Exchange formats like TYDEX were designed so tire data carries its conditions with it, and labs standardising broader channel data on ASAM ODS can hold tire results in the same structure as everything else they test.

Labelling and type approval pull from almost every test in the programme. An EU tyre label needs rolling resistance to ISO 28580, wet grip measured against a Standard Reference Test Tire and pass-by noise, plus snow and ice grip where claimed. Regulation (EU) 2020/740 also requires tire data to be registered in the EPREL product database. The number in the lab report, the number on the label and the number in EPREL must match.

Most labs still assemble that submission by copying values from 4 or 5 systems into a report template. Every copy is a chance for a transcription error that surfaces during a market surveillance check.

The cost of hand-built reports shows up outside tire testing too. An independent battery and HV lab running 3 UK sites had engineers spending days pulling thermal data, CAN logs and observations from disconnected systems into reports. Once observations lived inside the test record and reports were generated from it, reporting effort fell by about 45%. A tire homologation package draws on even more data streams, so the saving compounds.

Euro 7 adds another stream from 2028. Tire abrasion testing measures mass loss over long distances against reference tires, and those results will need the same traceability as wet grip.

The lab manager asks the operational questions: which uniformity machine, F&M rig or drum ran the test, whether it was in calibration that day and which SRTT or control tire served as the reference, including how many runs that reference had already completed.

Reference tires matter more than most outsiders realise. Wet grip results are expressed relative to the SRTT, so a worn or aged reference shifts every candidate result tested against it. A wet grip test without a logged reference serial cannot be reproduced.

Proving grounds that track assets on paper struggle with this more than anyone. An independent proving ground that later moved to TITAN began with asset tracking on paper and bookings that never talked to billing. Connecting proving ground assets and track bookings in one live system is what makes a reference tire traceable from storage rack to wet braking surface. The same logic applies indoors, where each machine's calibration state should sit on the test record automatically.

Most tire labs run equipment from several manufacturers. A force and moment machine from MTS, a drum from ZF and test systems from Leonardo each write their own file formats to their own controller PCs. TITAN brings that raw data into one database.

A test data management layer collects files from every connected rig as they are written and tags each one with the tire, the test request and the test conditions. Raw files of any format or size stay attached to the request that produced them, and ASAM ODS support lets labs hold tire channels in the same structure as the rest of their test data. Engineers search by tire, compound, condition or result and compare runs from different machines side by side.

A test tire ends its life in a skip behind the lab. Its data has to survive for years after that, through label audits, market surveillance checks, recall investigations and the next vehicle maker asking for force and moment data on a compound developed 3 programmes ago.

The labs that win repeat work are the ones that can answer the compound engineer, the dynamics engineer, the homologation manager and their own operations team from the same record in minutes. Start with the test that causes the most rework today, usually wet grip or endurance, and move it onto structured records first. Once one test type runs that way, every other test follows the same template, and the lab stops searching for its own results.

What tests are included in tire testing?

Tire testing typically covers uniformity, force and moment, rolling resistance, wet grip, pass-by noise, endurance, high speed and wear or abrasion. Regulatory tests follow FMVSS 139 in the US, UN R30, R54 and R117 in UN markets and the EU tyre label regulation for consumer labelling.

What is a Standard Reference Test Tire?

A Standard Reference Test Tire, or SRTT, is a tightly specified tire used as a benchmark in wet grip and other comparative tests. Candidate results are expressed relative to the SRTT so they can be compared across days, tracks and labs.

When do Euro 7 tire abrasion limits apply?

Euro 7 tire abrasion limits apply to new C1 passenger car tire types from 1 July 2028. Light commercial and heavy commercial tires follow in 2030 and 2032.

Ready to Make Every Tire Result Traceable?

Bring tire test requests, machine data, reference tires and inspection evidence together with TITAN.