Investigation of the temperature behaviour of sliding rubber materials

Abstract

At the IMWS a testing device called Linear Friction Tester (LFT) was developed, which is mainly used to characterise and quantify the friction behaviour of tire materials under varying conditions. During the friction process a considerable amount of heat is generated at the contact surface. Starting from theoretical approaches, there is supposed to be a strong interrelation between the friction coefficient and the temperature T of the rubber. By means of temperature sensors, FE-calculations and a model for the heat conduction it was possible to measure and calculate the heating of the rubber with high accuracy. In this paper some examples are presented for results of such measurements. A model for the heat conduction is illustrated, and testing the correlation between measurement and calculations validates the practicability of the model.