ABSTRACT
Tire industry will be forced in the next two decades to enhance their activities towards more robust, more abrasion resistant, more wear and failure resistant rubber compounds for consumer as well as truck tires. I expect in near future a better balance in the efforts to optimize the magic triangle, i.e. rolling resistance, wet traction/and skid behavior and wear. Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research Dresden (IPF) has recently introduced the holistic approach in rubber science and technology that is called Rubberiomics™, named after the term Materiomics that is focused on system functionality and behavior, rather than a piecewise collection of properties, a paradigm similar to systems biology. As part of this research, the presentation delivers an overview and some new selected results about two recent approaches which both have a common facet, namely the kinetics and rearrangements of structural entities of the rubber. In the first case (1) we consider the flocculation of the reinforcing filler (carbon black or/and silica) within a rubber polymer matrix, and the second example (2) enlightens the reorganization – and their dynamics behind - of non-covalently crosslinked rubber polymer networks which we designed and investigated with respect to self-healing properties of the material.
