Off-the-road tires

In tires, carbon black is important because of the high flex fatigue and tear strength requirements of this product. Poor dispersion can result in premature cracking in both treads and sidewalls. In off-the-road tires poor dispersion results in excessive chip/chunk causing a significant loss in treadwear in addition to tread lug cracking which can lead to loss of an entire lug (radial tread bar). 

Silica. The main uses of silica are in the treads of off-the-road tires for improved chunking and tear resistance and as a component of the bonding system for brass and zinc-plated steel cord. These are commonly used in radial passenger and truck tire belt skim stock. In addition the body plies of steel radial truck tires, hoses and belts, and footwear use significant volumes of silica as a reinforcing filler. 

A large proportion of the circa 3.7 x 106 t/yr of natural mbber used in tires is consumed in tmck tires, off-the-road tires, and aircraft tires, all of which demand a low heat buildup performance. The retreading of tmck tires was also the province of natural mbber until the precured process was developed. Prior to the advent of this technique, the tack of natural mbber was essential for the unvulcanized mbber to adhere onto the buffed carcass, and the thickness of the shoulder region was such that the low heat buildup of natural mbber was essential to ensure that no failure occurred in service. With the precured tread process neither of these attributes were necessary and, synthetic mbber, which was and continues to be used, was found to give particularly good wear performance under low severity conditions, especially in the United States. However, work (56) has shown that natural mbber-based formulations can be developed which give a similar order of wear performance to the all-synthetic mbber tread, but with the additional benefit of lower rolling resistance, and hence better fuel economy. 

Although the consumption of polymer is small, an important use of natural rubber is in off-the-road tires, such as earthmover tires and aircraft tires. Earth-mover treads can be compounded with natural rubber to have excellent tear resistance and to reduce torn treads and chunkouts. In aircraft tires, the natural tread absorbs well the blow in landing. Natural rubber is little used in retreads although frequently used in the cushion gum, the thin rubber compound layer that joins the tread to the tread base in retreading. 

About 70% of natural rubber consumption goes into tire production while the remaining 30% is used by the nontire sector. There is some substitutability of various synthetic elastomers for natural rubber, but it is rather limited. This substitutability is restricted for the tire sector, which globally uses almost half of its total rubber requirement as natural rubber. In the short term, it is technically very difHcult to make major substitutions of synthetic rubber for NR use. Some applications are very critical, such as the use of NR in wire adhesion compounds for the production of steel-belted radial tires. Also, the use of natural rubber is very critical in the production of very large off-the-road tires. However, the natural rubber requirements of the nontire sector were only 29% of its total rubber usage in the year 2000. The nontire sector only used about 22% of its total rubber requirement as natural rubber in 2010. Many times it is easier in the nontire sector to substitute specialty syn-... 

Nylon is used extensively in truck, bus, and off-the-road tire applications because it is a strong crystalline polymer with very good fatigue resistance and toughness. 

An RFL dip consists of an aqueous resorcinol formaldehyde resin liquid with a ruhher latex. The RF resin is used to achieve good adhesion to the organic fiber substrate whether it be rayon, nylon, or polyester. The rubber latex portion can be a natural rubber latex or a styrene butadiene vinylpyridine (terpolymer) latex or even a neoprene latex. This rubber latex is present to achieve good adhesion with the rubber matrix itself. So the RFL allows good adhesion between the rubber and the textile cord reinforcement whether it is used in the manufacture of passenger tires, truck tires, off-the-road tires, power transmission belts, V-belts, timing belts, or various hose products. 

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