This research paper describes a new method to measure the groove wander effect on real concrete road surfaces using an Internal Drum Test Bench. Groove wander describes lateral forces resulting from interactions between a tire and the road surface texture. To create these lateral forces, the test bench induces a continuous lateral displacement of the tire on a textured road surface. It was found that the groove wander effect could be reproduced on a test bench. The presented method was shown to provide reproducible results that meet the expectations from previous studies. The overall findings of the measurements were that smaller tires and tires with longitudinally aligned profile show higher susceptibility to the groove wander effect.

Artificially created road surfaces are typically used in indoor test benches or simulations to study tire-road contact. This dataset contains measurements from real-world concrete highways. The data contained in the dataset can be used as a road model in simulations, or artificially generated roadways can be compared with the dataset. In addition, road surface wear can be taken into account, since measurements are available from positions with varying levels of traffic (in the lateral direction). The dataset consists of road data from four measurement positions on two federal highways in southwestern Germany. A total of four measurement methods were used: high-resolution 3D scans, texture depth measurements, skid resistance measurements, and the sand patch test. The methods are described in detail in the article. All data have been processed to ensure they can be used as effectively as possible by other researchers. A comparison of methods was conducted for the results of the texture depth measurements and the sand patch method. The dataset was uploaded to RADAR4KIT under the following DOI: