Experimental measurement of rolling resistance of a tire requires the costly procedure of building the tire and testing it on a wheel testing machine. Therefore, in the development stage, it is desirable to have a simpler procedure for relative comparison of the rolling resistance as the function of the design variables.
In this article, use of a high strain dynamic viscoelastometer for this purpose is described. By use of the results of measurements made with the viscoelastometer on the specimen which is either from a tire or from a laboratory-molded experimental sample, we analyze the comparative level of rolling resistance of the tire which comprises the specimen.
It is shown that the procedure provides a means of carrying out a preliminary screening of materials and design of tire construction fast and inexpensively. Principle underlying the procedure is to deduce the overall energy loss from the running tire from the energy loss of a small segment of the tire under cyclic deformation which is similar to the actual deformation of the tire wall.
Examples of the analyses using this method are illustrated together with the description of the procedure involving the use of the high strain dynamic viscoelastometer.