Rubber Abrasion

Abrasion is one of the most crucial properties for rubber applications. People have spent a lot of effort trying to understand the true abrasion mechanisms and predict the real wear behaviour. Unfortunately, rubber abrasion is still an unclear field for us. And no one can predict the real wear behaviour such as tyre tread wear. In this study, two abrasion tests were conducted to evaluate five tyre tread compounds, blade abrasion test and homemade surface abrasion test. Two different abrasion mechanisms are confirmed, mechano-chemical degradation and mechanical failure respectively.  Blade abrasion shows good correlation with pure shear fatigue test for some materials. Abrasion test on different surfaces indicates different abrasion behaviours. Presence of water on sand paper does not always reduce the abrasion rate. And introduction of powder could change the abrasion mechanism.