Page 43 - Commercial Vehicle Engineer - June 2021

It was taken over by Millbrook Group in 2015, and since then has benefitted from investment to extend its indoor facilities to include wet and dry
brake testing. Following Millbrook’s merger earlier this year, Test World
is now part of the UTAC CERAM Millbrook Group, which includes eight test centres in Finland, France, the UK (Millbrook Proving Ground in Bedfordshire) and the US. A new test facility is set to open in Morocco later this year.
REAL SNOW
Test World’s indoor facility was first opened in 2012 and has since expanded to include things like handling testing, as well as brake testing.
So once the snow has melted outside, the team go inside. As Antila explains, it is a year-round process. “In January and February, we take away all the old snow that has been inside the facility for the past nine to 10 months,” he says. “Then we collect snow from outside and put about 10cm inside, compact it very hard, put some more in on top of that and compact that.
“This means that at the beginning
of March we have about 25cm of compacted snow, which would be about one metre of non-compacted snow. After that, no new snow is bought in and we don’t have any snow storage,
so what we have stays there. But we prepare the surface daily to keep it at
a good level. We scrape a little bit and then compact again – we have many systems to do it.”
Come December, there is usually about 10-15cm of snow left, and then the process starts again with fresh snow brought in.
While there are other testing facilities in other countries that offer indoor testing on snow, that snow is artificial. This makes a difference when testing tyres: “It has to be done on real snow to accurately measure things like tyre grip,” says Antila.
INDOOR ADAPTATIONS
Adaptations are made for indoor testing. For instance, the indoor facilities have
a maximum height of 2.7 metres, which means that larger tractor units cannot fit inside, but Test World has its own special low-ceiling truck that can be used to
test tyres.
This lower height truck can be loaded
with ballast to certain weights and ratios depending on the tyre being tested, adds Andrew Beach, test development director at Test World.
Having all-year-round facilities has major benefits for customers from around the world as it means they don’t have
to wait for winter conditions in Europe
or North America, where most tests are carried out.
“Our customers say that they can increase their development cycles to have three loops of development per year,” notes Antila.
TRACTION TRUCK
Test World continues to innovate, including the launch in March of its ASTM Traction Truck, an all-electric test vehicle designed to conduct ASTM 1805 tyre testing for customers from all over the world.
The Test World ASTM Traction truck
is designed for testing tyres according to the ASTM 1805 test standard for single wheel driving traction in a straight line on snow-covered surfaces. The standard helps drivers to identify tyres that provide a higher level of snow traction. Tyres meeting the standard are branded with the three-peak mountain snowflake (3PMSF) symbol.
The test method employs an instrumented, rear-wheel drive test vehicle – the Test World Traction Truck – to measure average longitudinal and vertical forces acting on the test tyre under acceleration.
TEST WORLD
“Our customers say that they can increase their development cycles to have three loops
of development per year”
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