Marco Furlan

Marco graduated in mechanical engineering from Valencia Polytechnic University, receiving his MSc in motorsport engineering from Oxford Brookes University and completing his PhD in tire friction at Loughborough University in 2024. Marco's experience includes roles as a tire modeling engineer at Jaguar Land Rover and – currently – as a senior modeling engineer at Calspan, focusing on advanced thermomechanical tire models, tribology and rubber friction estimation.

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Presentation

Predicting tire performance on asphalt from indoor measurements

Indoor tire testing provides a controlled environment to obtain highly repeatable and consistent data across a wide range of test conditions. However, concerns arise regarding the difference between the road surface of indoor facilities – typically sandpaper – and real-world asphalt. The presentation proposes a novel indoor testing methodology to predict the change in tire performance when transitioning from sandpaper to asphalt surfaces, eliminating the need to retest tires on asphalt. This approach exploits the repeatability and accuracy of indoor testing to develop a predictive estimate of tire performance change (such as Magic Formula scaling factors) for asphalt based purely on indoor measurements.