English Abstract

Ecology-Friendly Materials Technologies in Tire Yoichi Ozawa Bridgestone Corporation, Technical Center, Tokyo, Japan Keizo Akutagawa Bridgestone Corporation, Technical Center, Tokyo, Japan Kazuhiro Yanagisawa Bridgestone Corporation, Technical Center, Tokyo, Japan Yasushi Hirata Bridgestone Corporation, Technical Center, Tokyo, Japan Nippon Gomu Kyokaishi, (2004), 77(6), 219-225 General Review in Japanese. Abstract Environment protection is and will be the most important aspect of the tire development. A study of tire's life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted under Japan Rubber Manufacturers Association, and revealed that the usage stage accounts for more than 85% of total CO2 emission in an entire life cycle of a common tire. From this standpoint, reduction of rolling resistance (RR) is the most important requirement, followed by extension of service life, which contributes to all other stages. Following the development of silica-filled tread compound, further reduction of hysteresis loss had been achieved by development of new materials for silica system, such as dispersion additive and novel modified polymers. In addition, recent implementation of non-linear viscoelastic properties in the Finite Element Analysis has greatly improved the precision of tire RR prediction. This will allow efficient application of low hysteresis materials in tire design. Keywords: Life Cycle Assessment, Modified polymer, Functionalized polymer, Dispersion aid, Dispersion additive, Non-linear viscoelasticity constitutive equation

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