Evaluation of Tire Wear Performance

A method is presented to characterize wear in customer use. The procedure consists sampling 25 to 100 vehicles fitted with production tires for wear. The usage severity of each vehicle is determined. Then, development tires can be placed on a few of these vehicles chosen with the desired wear severity to represent the full range of customer usage correctly. Tread wear is measured in an annual cycle. The method takes into account road surface, weather, driving styles, routes, vehicles and other parameters that each can affect wear by factors of two to ten or more. Tire wear performance is presented as a statistical distribution. Mild, medium and severe usage tire life is highlighted.