Thermal Property Characterisation for Tyre Rubber Materials

Abstract

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">Tyre rubber materials are viscoelastic in nature and generates heat during its operation due to hysteresis loss. Rubber being a poor thermal conductor, heat dissipation is a concern from product durability point of view. Further, during tyre manufacturing, curing is an essential process where heat conduction of rubber materials plays an important role to achieve desirable cure state. Therefore, thermal properties of rubber compounds are important inputs for tyre designing and manufacturing process. With this background, the present work focuses on characterising thermal properties (thermal conductivity, specific heat, thermal diffusivity, etc.) of rubber compounds using a Hot Disc Thermal Conductivity (TPS-2200, Sweden). In this work, new generation fillers, such as carbon nano tube were used in the rubber compounds to improve thermal conduction and thermal properties are compared with conventional carbon black based rubber compound. These new generation fillers are anisotropic in nature and have a colossal difference in the axial (in-plane) and radial (through-plane) heat flow. For these heterogeneous materials, anisotropic methods are more decisive compared to the isotropic one to obtain their actual thermal conductivity behaviour. Hence, a comprehensive investigation of heat profiles with varying morphology and texture has been elucidated in this work for detailed understanding of tyre curing with better prediction of product performance.</div></div>