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Pongdhorn Sae-oui [1] and Krisda Suchiva [1; 2] and Chakrit Sirisinha [2] and Wenussarin Intiya [1] and Pram Yodjun [1] and Uthai Thepsuwan [1]

Academic Editor: Luigi Nicolais

1, MTEC, National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA), 114 Thailand Science Park (TSP), Phahonyothin Rd., Pathum Thani 12120, Thailand, nstda.or.th

2, Rubber Technology Research Centre (RTEC), Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Salaya Campus, Phutthamonthon 4 Rd., Salaya, Nakhon Pathom 73170, Thailand, mahidol.ac.th

Received Apr 30, 2017; Accepted Sep 6, 2017

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

1. Introduction

It is widely known that tire performance is justified by three main properties, that is, rolling resistance, wet grip efficiency, and abrasion resistance. Reducing rolling resistance of tire has gained much attention during the last two decades due to the increase demand for green transportation as tires are responsible for approximately 20–30% of vehicle’s fuel consumption. Wet grip efficiency, or the handling ability of tire on wet road, is also of great importance as it is directly related to driving safety. Abrasion resistance is one of the key parameters to indicate the tire endurance. Many attempts have successively been made to investigate parameters affecting properties of tire tread compound with the goal of achieving improvements of both rolling resistance and wet grip efficiency of tire [1–12]. Previous works have shown that rolling resistance and wet grip efficiency are closely related to dynamic viscoelastic behavior of tread compound and can be represented by the ratio of loss modulus to storage modulus (tan⁡δ) at high temperature (~60°C) and low temperature (~0°C), respectively [8, 9, 13–17].

Carbon black (CB) has been widely used as the main reinforcing filler for tire tread compound because it offers greater processability with higher tire endurance, as compared with untreated silica. However, with the advent of silane coupling agent which can significantly improve silica dispersion and silica-rubber interaction, the use of silica technology has become popular for high performance tire nowadays. It has been reported that considerable reduction in rolling resistance can be achieved when carbon black is partially or fully replaced by silane-treated silica [16, 18]. In...
 

  
   
               
               
               
       
       
       

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