Structural combination design improves aging endurance of light truck radial tires
by Cai Yingying, Yu Benyi and Xing Cheng, Giti Tire Research and Development Center
Tire aging is an important cause of tire failure for light truck (LT) large sized tires that are more prone to aging endurance problems if the ambient temperature is high and the daylight hour is long. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has been studying tire aging endurance for nearly 15 years and has now identified a suitable indoor test method that will likely be written into the FMVSS standard in the future.
In 2016, the China Rubber Tire Quality Supervision and Inspection Center launched the Research on Automobile Tire Aging Test Project, and invited tire companies in the industry to carry out comparative analyses under the same conditions, finally concluding that there is a certain gap between the aging endurance of domestic tire brands and the international industry benchmark. The tensile strength and elongation at break characteristics of domestic tire brands have decreased significantly after aging, which is not a small gap compared with those of international industry benchmark brands.