Bridgestone enhances virtual tyre development as its driving simulator goes live

Bridgestone, a specialist in premium tyres and sustainable mobility solutions, has reached a key milestone in its digital tyre development journey with its driving simulator becoming fully operational

Installed at the company’s Research and Development (R&D) Centre near Rome, Italy, the VI-grade DiM500 Driver-in-the-Loop (DiL) simulator allows Bridgestone to assess tyre performance in a virtual environment.

Mattia Giustiniano, R&D senior vice president at Bridgestone West, said, “Bridgestone is already considered a pioneer in digital tyre development – leveraging Virtual Tyre Development for more than a decade. By integrating the driver into the digital development cycle, this investment adds a crucial new piece to our evolving ecosystem. The simulator’s introduction marks a significant step in enhancing the efficiency and sustainability of our R&D processes, while unlocking unprecedented opportunities to foster innovation.”

The simulator features a mobile platform with a five-metre range of motion and a carbon-fibre cockpit, immersing the driver in a hyper-realistic environment imitating real-world driving. This range of motion facilitates the reproduction of forces equivalent to physical tests, enabling highly accurate analysis.

Combining high-fidelity simulations with subjective driver feedback, historical data and AI technologies, this new capability enables earlier, more accurate design decisions. It allows Bridgestone to evaluate a larger number of tyre specifications than traditional physical testing and in less time, across a wider range of conditions. Physical testing still remains an essential part of Bridgestone’s development process, but is reserved for the final stages of tyre validation.

Bridgestone’s new DiL simulator reduces the need for physical tyre prototypes and is expected to save up to 12,000 experimental tyres annually, helping to decrease environmental impact.

Bridgestone’s Virtual Tyre Development (VTD) technology has already helped reduce raw material consumption and CO2 emissions by around 60% during the development phase of original equipment tyres.

The integration of the DiM500 simulator will also accelerate time-to-market by enabling tyres and vehicles to be developed in parallel, supporting closer collaboration with vehicle manufacturers.

The simulator primarily supports dry-handling evaluations, but can also be expanded to assess a broader range of performance conditions. Backed by Bridgestone’s global investment in R&D, this work will reinforce the company’s ability to meet the needs of vehicle manufacturers and end users.