Abstract
A set of treadwear data representing over eight million tire section-miles of road testing was fitted by a carefully constructed simple model involving only two carbon black properties as independent variables, plus test severity as a parameter. It is shown that the carbon black char acteristics measured by two practical laboratory tests — surfactant (cetyltrimethylammonium bromide) adsorption for accessible specific sur face area and dibutylphthalate absorption on precompressed black for "structure" — can account for virtually all of the observed wear resistance variation among carbon blacks which is not obscured by random exper imental error. This degree of success in correlating roadwear data using only a simple two-parameter description of morphology hinges on use of surface area and structure test methods relatively free of extraneous influences known to affect results obtained by the standard ASTM iodine number and DBP procedures.
The weight of data on which the model is based renders predictions by means of the correlation more reliable than results of individual tire tests of conventional design. Potentially attractive economies in quality testing of carbon black are implied by the possibility of "instant" roadwear screening of carbon blacks from diverse sources.
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