Investigation of rubber flow during tire shaping process by experiment and numerical simulations

Abstract

Tire plays an important role during driving as comes in direct contact with the road. A comprehensive understanding of the flowing behavior of unvulcanized rubber during the shaping process of tire is essential for the design of tire. The tread has grooves with complex shapes, which are formed by a mold during the tire shaping process. When tread rubber does not fill the mold properly, tire quality deteriorates crucially. We conducted an experiment and computer simulation to determine the flow of tread rubber in the mold. The comprehensive tire building and shaping processes are investigated through the finite element method. The material distribution of the tire obtained by simulation compares is in good agreement with that of the tire theoretical design. The maximum error of rubber components sizes between the simulation and test is 6.22%. The belt layer is the main force bearing component, and it has a directly influence on the rubber flow. The simulation results show that the belt cord force decrease with the cord laying angle from 24 to 30 and increase rapidly with the increase of the cord arrangement spacing.