Effect of Aging on Tire Force and Moment Characteristics

There has been very little investigation into the area of tire aging and whether storing a tire will change it's properties, in particular ‘limit’ or ‘saturated’ properties, over time. In order to study how the performance characteristics of tires change when the tires are stored, a series of force and moment tests were performed on five modern day radial tires of different make, brand, type, and size. The tires were all purchased at the same time for a given tire set and had the same DOT code. Near the date of purchase, some of the tires were tested on the Veridian TIRF (Tire Research Facility) machine in order to measure their force and moment characteristics. Other tires of the lot were placed on a tire rack in a storage building. Years later, these tires were sent to the same test facility and were measured under the same test conditions. The data indicates that tire performance characteristics change very little with time. When some change was noted, it tended to show that age causes tires to have a higher cornering stiffness values and similar saturated lateral force capacities.