Rubber Abrasion and Tire Wear

Abstract Rubber abrasion is essentially a mechanical tearing process and has been linked with the rate of a cut growth process as function of the tearing energy dissipated in the contact area between rubber and track which leads inevitably to considerable temperature rises at the points of highest stress concentration i.e. at the points at which a mechanical detachment of abraded particles is most likely. This leads to thermal degradation and oxidation as important secondary mechanisms which may well decide whether a compound performs better or worse than a reference outweighing the mechanical properties. A laboratory method has been developed, using the LAT 100 test equipment, which uses the energy dissipation and slip speeds in the contact area of a rubber sample wheel, rotating under slip, to evaluate the abrasion performance of a compound over a wide range of these variables. The resulting equations can be used either to test directly the correlation between laboratory and road test results which is usually good over a limited range, or they are used in a road test simulation program with well defined road test conditions. The latter gives a set of single compound ratings and tire lives. These depend however strongly on the chosen test conditions and in that they reflect reality