The role and skills of adding silica to rubber tires Silica is a white inorganic additive with certain reinforcing properties. It can replace carbon black to reinforce rubber products in the production of rubber products, especially white, light-colored or colored rubber products. The use of silica in the production of off-road tires, engineering tires, radial tires, etc. can improve the comprehensive performance of automobile tires and increase the mileage of tires. So what are the specific roles of silica in rubber tires, and what should be paid attention to when using silica in tire production?

1. The role of silica in tires

Adding silica in tire production can reduce tire rolling resistance, reduce fuel consumption, and significantly improve tire anti-skid performance and safety performance. The research shows that the use of silica instead of carbon black can effectively reduce the Paine effect 2YLYY329 of the rubber compound and the loss tangent tanδ at high temperature, thereby improving the rolling resistance of the tire. Using all-white carbon black tread compound can reduce rolling resistance by 20% and tread hysteresis by about 50%, thereby saving more than 3% of fuel.

After adding silica to the tire tread compound formulation, the properties of the tire are significantly improved; especially in the balance of tire wear resistance, wet traction and rolling resistance.

2. Insufficient use of silica in tires

When silica is used for rubber tire reinforcement, due to its small interface area, it has poor affinity with rubber; it is easy to agglomerate, which is not conducive to dispersion during mixing; it has the effect of delaying vulcanization in the vulcanization process, and it is easy to react with other components . Silica is easy to adsorb other compounding agents, which is not conducive to dispersion; easy to dehydrate to form siloxy groups, which is not conducive to adhesion; the structure is hardened, and the viscosity increases during storage. Therefore, tire manufacturers should take certain measures to improve the application effect of silica when using silica.

3. Methods to improve the effect of adding silica to tires

In actual production, modifiers can be used to adjust the addition effect of silica in tires, mainly coupling agents, and silane coupling agents in coupling agents are more commonly used. The siloxy group in the silane coupling agent is reactive to inorganic substances, and the organic functional group is reactive or compatible to organic substances. When the silane coupling agent is interposed between the inorganic and organic interfaces, a bonding layer of organic matrix-silane coupling agent-inorganic matrix can be formed.

After adding an appropriate amount of silane coupling agent to the tire formulation reinforced with silica, a firm bond can be formed between the elastomer and silica molecules, which further improves the elongation at break and tear resistance, and obtains Lower lag performance.

In actual production, rubber tire manufacturers can also use high dispersity silica. High dispersity silica can not only better ensure tire wet skid resistance and low rolling resistance, but also improve the wear and processing properties of rubber compounds.