Novel Approach for Digital Footprints on 3D-printed Road Surface Replicas

5th International Tyre Colloquium (IAVSD), March 25th 2026, Kaiserslautern, Germany
Gunnar Böttcher, Institute for Automotive Engineering (ika)
Benjamin Schäfer, Institute for Automotive Engineering (ika)
Univ.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. Lutz Eckstein, Institute for Automotive Engineering (ika)
Dr.-Ing. Christian Bachmann, fka GmbH

As often presented, the simulation of full vehicle driving maneuvers is reliant on an accurate description of the force transfer between the tyres and the road. To parametrize tyre simulation models and the interaction between the tyre and the surface, digital sensor mats are used to measure the pressure distribution in the contact patch and thus the local contact conditions that transmit the tyre forces. While pressure measurement films that were widely used in the past could be applied to real road surfaces, they had significant disadvantages in terms of complex post-processing steps and a slow workflow. On the other hand, modern digital pressure sensing mats are sensitive to the sharp surface of roads as well as shear stress. Considering the high costs of these digital solutions, regular usage on real roads is not reasonable. The advantage is that the process with digital mats is significantly more efficient and many footprints with different loads and high resolution can be generated in a short period of time.

This publication presents a novel approach to using state-of-the-art 3D digitization and additive manufacturing processes to reliably measure the contact pressure distributions of tyres on any surface replicas as intermediate layers on digital pressure sensor mats in addition to common measurements on smooth surfaces.