Continental widens scope of pressure sensors

As part of ongoing development activities, international automotive supplier Continental is widening the range of functions available with its tyre pressure sensors.

Where in the past only special vehicles were capable of checking permitted axle loads, future vehicles will be able to calculate this information automatically on the basis of data from their tyre pressure sensors.

“In the past, it was more or less up to drivers to ‘guess-timate’ to the best of their abilities whether or not the maximum permitted payload of a car had already been reached,” explains Andreas Wolf, head of the Body & Security Business Unit at Continental. “In the future, the vehicle will be able to tell the driver after just a few hundred metres whether the payload has already exceeded the maximum permitted limit, or whether the tyre pressure would simply need to be adjusted accordingly. In this way, our tyre pressure sensors will not only help to save fuel, but also offer active assistance in terms of vehicle safety.”

For its automatic load detection system, the engineers at Continental take advantage of the physical properties of vehicle tyres. The contact patch of the tyre increases as a result of the weight bearing down on the tyre. With the future generation of sensors, which will be fitted directly underneath the tread of the tyre, the tyre pressure monitoring system can accurately detect the size of this contact area. With every revolution of the tyre, the sensor registers the rolling characteristics of the tyre on the road. Based on the existing tyre pressure and precise data about the tyres fitted, the system is able to inform the driver after just a few hundred metre if a change in the pressure would be appropriate for the current payload.

Load detection will be the basis for some more vehicle improvements. Current assistance systems relating to vehicle dynamics are designed to provide occupants with the highest level of comfort and safety benefits independently from the load conditions.

Assistance systems today are always working with the assumption of a maximum payload. As soon as systems like ESC, Emergency Steer Assist or Autonomous Emergency Braking Assistant can incorporate information about the actual vehicle weight in their responses, this will enable them to provide even more efficient comfort and support for drivers.

Alongside the major advantage of direct-measuring tyre pressure monitoring systems – providing drivers with accurate, tyre-specific information about the actual tyre pressure – additional functions are now also being implemented step-by-step in series production vehicles.

For example, one Asian manufacturer now offers customers a subfunction of the Filling Assistant presented by Continental: a first vehicle model now automatically generates a short acoustic signal during filling once the required tire pressure has been reached. This ensures that the tyres always run on the correct pressure, even if they are filled using non-calibrated filling equipment. Rolling resistance is reduced as a result, and the tyres perform to their maximum capability in terms of safety and comfort.