The electric revolution in the automobile industry is picking up the pace and is the driving force for the tire industry to move toward the next level of design and manufacturing capability. Tire performances are being pushed to the limits with ultra-low RR, high traction, low levels of NVH and uncompromised wear performance requirements. The presentation will be on how the stringent performance requirements are bringing in more contradiction and complexity (low RRC with low tire weight is contradicting NVH performance such as structure-borne noise), the approach that has been taken and case studies on NVH improvement.

Investigation of the perception of tyre noise is gaining momentum recently due to the implementation of Electric vehicles. This is because the EVs are noiseless and could lead to a compromise in pedestrian safety and interior noise. In this work, the influence of rubber hardness on the tyre rolling noise is discussed and simulated using FE up to 1 kHz. It was observed that variations in rubber hardness alters the characteristics of tyre rolling noise. As a future study, these noise files will be subjected to psychoacoustic tests to analyse the tyre noise for their perception by vulnerable road users.

With vehicle electrification, tire rolling noise is becoming one of the most important sources of cabin interior noise. To enable early-stage NVH performance optimization at the tire and vehicle level in a virtual manner, an efficient frequency domain approach has been developed. True measured road characteristics are converted to inputs for the tire patch through a smart envelopment method. These patch inputs, applied to a novel CAE concept tire model that represents the tire at a given rolling speed, enable the prediction of resulting wheel forces and from there the vehicle interior noise.

Electric vehicles are rapidly growing due to escalating climate/environmental focuses. The top tire goals for EVs include energy efficiency and wear resistance as demanded by heavier weight, battery lifespan and higher startup torque. Accordingly, novel synthetic rubbers with improved rolling resistance (R.R.) and wear properties are expected by the market. Our proprietary multiple-initiation, structural control and process technologies resulted in 15-40% improvements in R.R. and wear, plus better processibility and polymer-filler interactions especially with high filler loadings, compared to conventional chain-end functionalized polymers. TSRC’s new-generation SSBR & LiBr are positioned to support the automotive industry to achieve its sustainability goals.

Improvement of performance of automobile tires is an important area of tire technology development. Tire rolling resistance reduction – which benefits vehicle’s fuel economy – is one of main goals especially to increase the reach of e-mobiles. One way of achieving this goal is partial replacement of silica by a high-density filler e.g. fine particle size aluminium hydroxide. With our test recipe we could obtain improvements reg. processing (e.g. lower Mooney viscosity, increased Mooney, MDR scorch time), but also reg. tire performance (e.g. better traction, lower rolling resistance). Higher bulk density & lower hardness of ATH are additional benefits.