Research

Material Sciences

Title :	A multi-scale framework for designing green tyres
Area of research :	Material Sciences, Earth, Atmosphere & Environment Sciences
Focus area :	Indigenous model based software/tool development
Principal Investigator :	Krishna Kannan, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai

Details

Executive Summary :

Rolling resistance (RR) in tyres contributes to nearly 15-20% of the total fuel consumption in automobiles. Tyres with low RR are called ``Green Tyres'' since the automobiles using them produce less greenhouse gas emissions. This project will focus on manufacturing a green tyre without compromising on the wet traction and wear performance. Currently, the development of green-tyres involves trial and error, draining the financial resources and man-hours due to the several polymer-filler combinations, which have to be tried. It is known that a higher polymer-filler interface strength results in a lower RR. In this work molecular simulations will be used to reduce the sample space of prospective green tyre materials based on the polymer-filler interface strength. The design of a green tyre will be facilitated by developing and implementing validated constitutive equations using smoothed finite element method (FEM) in ABAQUS. The designed green tyre will be manufactured by MRF.

Co-PI:

Sundararajan Natarajan, Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai, Narasimhan Swaminathan, Associate Professor, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai, Manoj Pandey, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai