Application Of Graphene In Tire Treads

As the concepts of low-carbon life and environmental protection have enjoyed popular support,the research about “green tire” is under the spotlight of the science and technology community.As the part that directly contacts with road surface,tire tread makes the largest contribution to the over all performance of the tyre.Recently,by virtue of its fascinating properties,graphene has been incorporated into rubber formulation to manufacture high-performance tread rubber.However,solution polymerized butadiene styrene rubber and butadiene rubber are used as the basic rubbers in the tire of the car.The involved latex-mixing process is unsuitable for the preparing of these rubbers and graphene composites and it is unsuitable for industrialized production of tire tread.Therefore,it has great research value and prospects to seek a facile and industrialized approach method to fabricate high-performance graphene tread rubber by ensuring the homogeneous dispersion of graphene in rubber matrix.In the present thesis,three facile and industrialized process methodshave been developed to incorporate graphene into rubber formulation in order to improve the dynamic performance of tread rubber.Small molecular compound(TA)was utilized to intercalated into the graphene oxide(GO)sheets through a simple mechanical mixing in aqueous solution for preparing Tx G.Then,the as-prepared TxG was directly admixed with rubber formulation to fabricate graphene tread rubber.In the meantime,rhodamine(Rd)was also introduced into tread rubber for the in-situ reduction and surface modification of GO sheets during processing.As expected,GO sheets can be uniformly dispersed in rubber matrix upon the intercalation of TA.Meanwhile,the incorporation of Rd can effectively improve the interfacial interaction between GO sheets and rubber matrix upon the in-situ reduction and surface modification of GO sheets.Accordingly,the tensile modulus,tensile and tear strengths of the as-prepared tread rubber were concurrently enhanced with the addition of Tx G.The incorporation of 3 phr T1 G can give rise to the 12.8% decrease and 17.8% increase in the values of loss tangent(tan ?)at 60 and 0 oC,respectively,indicating the rolling resistance and wet skid resistance of the as-prepared tread rubber have been effectively improved.GO aqueous slurry was prepared and then directly compounded with rubber formulation to prepare graphene tread rubber through the slurry mixing.Due to the boiling and evaporation of aqueous solution during the high-temperature mixing process,the interlayer spacing of GO sheets was effectively increased,which facilitated the dispersion of GO sheets in rubber matrix.Firstly,the basical rubber formulation was uesd.Through the slurry compounding method,the incorporation of 3 phr GO into rubber can improve the stress at 300 % strain by 107%.The tan ? at 60 oC of the rubber decreased by 18.2% while the corresponding tan ? at 0 oC increased by 6.7%,indicating the rolling resistance and wet skid resistance of the as-prepared rubber have been effectively improved.Then,adopted the slurry compounding method to incorporate GO into the tread rubber formulation.Accordingly,the tensile modulus,tensile and tear strengths of the as-prepared tread rubber were simultaneously improved with the addition of GO slurry.The incorporation of 1 phr GO into tread rubber can lead to a 7.2% decrease of the heat build-up performance and a 11.6% increase of abrasion resistance.The tan ? at 60 oC of the as-prepared tread rubber decreased by 6.3% while the corresponding tan ? at 0 oC increased by 8.0%,indicating the integral improvement of dynamic performance of the tread rubber upon the incorporation of GO slurry.Tea polyphenols(TPs),a green natural product,was employed as a reductant and surface modifier to synthesis reduced GO(TPG).Subsequently,the TPG suspension was admixed with styrene butadiene rubber(SBR)latex to prepare SBR/TPG masterbatch.The as-prepared SBR/TPG masterbatch was incorporated into the rubber formation through the mechanical blending to fabricate graphene tread rubber.The incorporation of TPG can bring about a distinct mechanical reinforcement of the tread rubber.And the dynamic performance exhibited a improvement.In addition,with the incorporation of 2 phr TPG,the dynamic performance of the as-prepared tread rubber,involving rolling resistance and heat build-upperformance,also exhibited a slight improvement while the corresponding abrasion resistance increased by 14%.Notably,the tan ? at 0oC increased by 46%,indicating the prominent improvement of wet skid resistance of the tread rubber.