Goodyear, Sandia Labs mark 25 years of collaboration

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The collaboration between Goodyear and the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration's Sandia National Laboratories has achieved a milestone.

This month, the organizations will celebrate 25 years of collaboration in creating advanced computational mechanics, used in the development of tires. The results of the partnership, the companies say, are evident in consumer tires, data science breakthroughs and modeling and simulation technology.

Sandia said its work with the tire maker has helped to enhance its software toolkits and improve its capabilities for mission applications while addressing Goodyear's proprietary challenges.

"You might wonder how national defense systems relate to tire engineering," said Susan Seestrom, Sandia's chief research officer. "But a tire is a complex system — one of the most formidable challenges in computational mechanics — and that's something Sandia knows well."

Chris Helsel, Goodyear's chief technology officer said its extremely complicated to model and simulate tire performance, particularly under various temperature, pressure and wear conditions.

"Our computational work with Sandia," Mr. Seestrom said, "is a continuous source of competitive advantage for Goodyear, helping us design and deliver high-performance products and services in a digital economy."

Goodyear credits its work with Sandia for reducing new product development times, improving manufacturing methods and lowering technical and operational costs, which it said helps keep their products competitive.

Sandia, which has facilities in Albuquerque and Livermore, Calif., and Akron-based Goodyear signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) in 1993, when technology transfer from the national labs was in its heyday.

"Tech transfer was an exciting new opportunity for the labs," said Mary Monson, senior manager of technology partnerships at Sandia. "At the same time, Goodyear looked at our advanced computational mechanics software and saw it could be applied to tires. Instead of building and testing three to five prototypes before a tire was ready for manufacture, they could use our computer codes to develop one."

The first success story from the collaboration, the companies say, was the Goodyear Assurance TripleTred, an all-weather tire with a complicated multi-compound tread. Goodyear said it proved to be a commercial success for the tire company, winning numerous design awards. It was brought from concept to market in less than a year, Goodyear said, as a result of the modeling and predictive testing tools developed with Sandia.

Several lab technologies have enhanced the Sandia-Goodyear CRADA, including advanced computational mechanics, sophisticated geometry and meshing, computational simulation and verification, and structural and tire dynamics.

Goodyear said Sandia's work helped it appreciate the value of computer modeling in the early stages of development.

"We showed that modeling and simulation made a difference in developing better products faster," said Ted Blacker, Sandia's manager of simulation modeling sciences. "Our computational tools typically were used late in the process to understand why something broke and how to fix it. Now we use modeling more in the up-front stages, such as in the early design, to reduce testing."