PDEng position in Elastomer Technology and Engineering: “Wet grip optimization of tire compounds”

Tires can make the difference in the case of an emergency break on a wet road! To offer the best possible wet grip performance to the market, a present tire tread formulation should be optimized. For this, a DoE will be used. In-rubber properties like Payne effect of the uncured and cured compound, chemical and physical bound rubber, curing behavior, crosslink density by swelling experiments and the stress-strain behavior will be measured. Additionally, the wet grip performance will be characterized by DMA and LAT 100 measurements. Furthermore, the rolling resistance will be characterized by DMA. As final outcome, a prototype having an improved wet grip performance without losing rolling resistance performance will be proposed.