Material identification for improving the strength of silica/SBR interface using MD simulations
- PDF / 3,755,022 Bytes
- 19 Pages / 595.224 x 790.955 pts Page_size
- 94 Downloads / 193 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
Material identification for improving the strength of silica/SBR interface using MD simulations Edwin Joseph1 · N. Swaminathan1 · K. Kannan1 Received: 1 April 2020 / Accepted: 27 July 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Comprehensive molecular dynamics simulations are conducted to identify material modifications which can improve strength and reduce hysteresis losses at the nanointerfaces formed between silica, silane coupling agent (SCA) and styrenebutadiene rubber (SBR), all of which are important ingredients of green tyres. Improving strength and reducing hysteresis losses at such interfaces are expected to reduce rolling resistance (RR), consequently lowering greenhouse emissions. Various modifications considered in this work include a variety of SBR blends, several SCA and surface occupancies of SCA on the silica surface. To tackle a large number of combinations possible and identify modifications which may improve the nature of the interfaces, a hierarchical computational framework is developed. The reduced sample space of such material modifications may be more amenable to comprehensive and computationally or experimentally expensive studies. It was found that some amino-based SCA in combination with certain blends of SBR can improve the interfaces strength and lower hysteresis losses, when compared to the commonly used bis[3-(triethoxysilyl)propyl]tetrasulfide (TESPT), which is a sulphur-based SCA. Keywords Computational framework · Silane coupling agents · Green tyre · Nanointerfaces · SBR · Emissions
Introduction The rolling resistance of tyres is defined as the energy consumed per unit distance of travel as a tyre rolls under load [1]. Rolling resistance (RR) contributes to nearly 10– 13% [2] of the total fuel consumption in a conventional vehicle, while in an electric vehicle (EV) it is around 23% [3]. Improvement in RR can reduce greenhouse emissions, increase the mileage of conventional vehicles
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00894-020-04489-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorised users. N. Swaminathan
[email protected] Edwin Joseph [email protected] K. Kannan [email protected] 1
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India
and expand the range of EV. About 90% of RR losses are due to hysteresis occurring in the rubber matrix of the tyre treads [4, 5]. Pure rubber has a very low physical strength [6] and is unsuitable for tyre manufacturing. Consequently, fillers such as carbon black or silica [7, 8] are added to the rubber matrix to improve its strength. The hysteresis loss in a filled rubber depends on the strength of the interface formed between filler and rubber matrix [9]. For instance, introduction of a strong chemical bond using silane coupling agents (SCA) between filler and rubber matrix can reduce the hysteresis losses [9]. Therefore, understanding the mechanical response
Data Loading...
