Sumitomo Rubber Industries has collaborated with Ibaraki University to establish a new technique to observe and analyse individual materials within tyre rubber.
Engineers have claimed that the research offers enormous potential to develop high-performance tyres with unprecedented levels of efficiency and wear resistance.
The new beam microscope can evaluate the actual rubber used in mass-produced tyres, rather than less representative processed test samples.
The microscope generates clear images of elements such as the sulphur cross-links or reinforcing agents and assigns specific colours to each element to clearly identify them.
Dr Bernd Löwenhaupt, from Sumitomo Rubber Europe, said: “Being able to evaluate the very structures of tyres themselves, provides us with image data which can be used to develop internal structures for future tyres that provide superior performance in terms of fuel efficiency, wear resistance, and so on.”
“This breakthrough offers enormous potential for the acceleration of our material development process. Using this technique, we have already succeeded in observing both coarse areas of sulphur cross-links within rubber in vivid detail for the first time.”