The EU Tyre Noise Label: The problem with measuring the noise level of only a few of all tyre variants

Ulf Sandberg; Piotr Mioduszewski

doi:10.3397/in_2022_0455

The EU Tyre Noise Label: The problem with measuring the noise level of only a few of all tyre variants

Abstract

The STEER project, described in another Inter-Noise 2022 paper, has evaluated the performance of the noise label of the European tyre label. The major finding was that uncertainties of the tyre/road noise measurements were higher than should be accepted. One of the worst uncertainty sources was found to be the common practice to measure only some tyres of all sizes or variants within a tyre line, to save money. Generally, only the noisiest tyre(s) is/are measured individually and other tyres in that line get the same level, which means that many if not most tyres are labelled with too high noise levels. Then consumers cannot find the quietest tyres. STEER lacked resources to study this problem, but a Swedish project supported STEER in this respect, by making it possible to measure noise of 53 tyres selected from tyre lines of three major tyre manufacturers. The results showed that even though tyres in each line were labelled with the same noise level, in practice they differed up to 6 dB in noise emission. To avoid this very serious source of uncertainty, a special simplified test is suggested in order to be able to label tyres correctly without too much extra effort.