The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company is the 2022 winner of the Innovation Award, in the category “Process,” presented by FEDIL, the Luxembourgish multisectoral business federation.
In this category, Goodyear was recognized for optimizing its Ultra-High-Performance (UHP) development process by combining different techniques and disciplines through a statistical model, extending current capabilities.
More than 50 performance criteria must be considered when developing a tire with improved performance, with each design combination influencing the final product. Most of these criteria are antagonistic, for example maximizing wet performance and minimizing rolling resistance. This approach enables streamlined development of new material concepts and uses all the parameters of tire design to simulate overall product performance, namely the characteristics of the tread rubber, the dimensions of the curing molds and the way the elements are arranged in the model.
“This new process is a major step on our journey towards digital and sustainable development. Through this combination of multifactor optimization and state-of-the-art virtual tools, we better understand the interactions between components and proven performance. Applied for the first time in our summer Ultra-High-Performance segment, this innovative process delivered both development efficiencies and magazine-winning performance,” said Xavier Fraipont, Goodyear’s Vice President for Product Development in Europe, Middle East and Africa.
The Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 6, an Ultra-High-Performance passenger tire, was developed following Goodyear’s new process. This resulted in many performance improvements such as dry performance, wet braking, wet handling and electric vehicle suitability.