About Us

Collaborating to Support Innovation

The widespread use and growth of virtual prototypes and simulation in the automotive market sparked an idea with the Smithers and Stackpole Engineering Services teams. Based on our mutual conversations with a myriad of clients across the supply chain, we felt there was a way that we could collectively assist development teams to iterate their designs more quickly, reduce physical prototypes, and push some development steps forward in the process.

Virtual Tire Lab combines nearly 100 years of tire testing expertise from Smithers with Stackpole Engineering Services’ extensive knowledge of intricate, high-resolution tire models for various vehicle types spanning over thirty years. The two companies have been working together for several decades to bring tire modeling solutions to a variety of clients across the tire and automotive industries. This was an opportunity to bring those years of collaboration together for a unique product designed to better assist tire and vehicle development teams.

Smithers provides industry-leading testing services in technologies such as force and moment testing, low and high-speed cleat testing, footprint analysis, rolling resistance, and many others as inputs to the tire model fitting process. The Stackpole team then fits this data into a tire model delivered through the proprietary, best-in-class Agile Tire™ software that allows the user to adjust parameters, visualize the models relative to others being evaluated, and send to common simulation software for virtual on-vehicle analysis. Virtual Tire Lab synthesizes these strengths into a unique tire model subscription service that will support tire and automotive development teams with a toolset designed for utility and speed.

Working with engineers in the virtual modeling space for several decades, we continue to envision ways to make their jobs easier. Virtual Tire Lab does just that. It provides a toolset to improve simulation earlier in the process.

Michael Stackpole

President & Founder

Stackpole Engineering Services

Providing meaningful, accurate tire benchmarking data to the industry is the foundation for our existence; going back to our founding in 1925. While the testing technologies and knowledge have evolved over the last 100 years, supporting our clients with key data in the forms they need to use it remains our goal. This collaboration provides that full package.

Jim Popio, PhD

Vice President, North America

Smithers

Founded in 1999 and headquartered in North Canton, Ohio, Stackpole Engineering Services, Inc. provides solutions for the Virtual world. As a full-service provider of engineering solutions, Stackpole Engineering takes an innovative approach to the most complex issues. Our team of industry-leading professionals are skilled in tire modeling, vehicle dynamics, data acquisition and analysis, vehicle simulation, and engineering tool development. We understand the challenges facing our customers and what’s required to be successful in the virtual world. We proudly serve clients across the globe, and value the collaborative relationships we have established with our customers, partners, and vendors.

Founded in 1925 and headquartered in Akron, Ohio, Smithers is a multinational provider of testing, consulting, information, and compliance services. With laboratories and operations in North America, Europe, and Asia, Smithers supports customers in the transportation, life science, packaging, materials, components, consumer, cannabis, dry commodities, and energy industries. Smithers delivers accurate data, on time, with high touch, by integrating science, technology, and business expertise, so customers can innovate with confidence.