Stress-based viscoelastic master curve construction of model tire tread compounds

One of the important aspects in the development of new tire compounds is the correlation between the dynamic mechanical properties of the rubber, measured on laboratory scale, and the actual tire performance. In order to predict wet traction, the viscoelastic behavior of the rubber materials at high frequencies (in the MHz range) needs to be studied. Viscoelastic master curves can be used to describe the properties of the materials over a wide frequency range. To be more precise, the dynamic mechanical measurements should be performed at high strains or stresses, in order to get closer to the conditions of real skid performance of the tire on the road. This requirement makes the measurements more restricted. In this work, the master curves for tire tread compounds filled with different amounts of silica were prepared applying stress-based measurements. The vertical and horizontal shift factors were calculated and compared to the ones derived from the strain-based measurements. The effect of filler networking on the dynamic mechanical properties in different regions was studied