Experimental activity for the analysis of tires tread responses at different conditions with a dynamic dial indicator

The knowledge of tires tread viscoelastic behaviour plays a fundamental role in automotive to optimize vehicle performance and safety. These properties are usually characterized by means of Dynamic Mechanical Analysis [1] which implies the testing of compound sample that can be obtained by destroying the tire of interest or manufactured in different condition respect to the final product provided by tiremakers. Nowadays, the non-destructive analysis procedures are an attractive solution. These techniques are essentially advantageous for being employed in testing the whole tire, allowing the analysis of a great number of them without affects costs. The purpose of this work is the experimental analysis of the tire tread response, in different working condition, evaluated by a commercial dial indicator [2] considering the measured displacement values of the device. Experimental tests have been carried out on different tread compounds and, being the tire performance strictly affected by the working temperature, additional tests have been performed by heating and cooling each sample in a range of interest [3, 4]. Moreover, the effects of aging on a tire has been studied. The comparison of the testing activity results shows the reliability of the dynamic dial indicator to capture the tires tread different behaviour within the operating condition of interest. These encouraging results lead to next step of the research activity which will focus on the evaluation of properties characterizing the hysteretic behaviour of tires.