Whether car, truck or bus – all vehicle types have one thing in common, they drive with tires made of rubber. Hardly any other component is as relevant to safety as a vehicle’s tires, which have an impact on safety and, above all, driving behaviour. To ensure that the wheels meet the safety standards and that the quality is permanently at a high level, continuous quality tests must be carried out.
With the Internal Mixer 350 SX, Brabender has developed an instrument that can be used in the tire industry, among others, both in recipe development and for research and development. In combination with a Brabender torque rheometer, the 350 SX analyses the melting behaviour of materials and compounds.

Optimising tyre formulations

Components of a car tire include rubber, carbon black and silica, which are processed in a multi-stage process: “The material has to be mixed, ground, extruded and finally cured. Optimising tire formulations and processing conditions can therefore be a challenge”, explains Simon Hill, Sales Engineer at Brabender. By simulating the process on a laboratory scale, potential savings can be identified in large-scale tyre production without compromising quality. The Brabender Internal Mixer 350 SX helps in this recipe optimisation by mixing the rubber and analysing the pure rubber. In addition, the effect and behaviour of ingredients such as carbon black or silica can be measured.

High torque thanks to new blade geometry

Compared to conventional tangential mixers, the Internal Mixer 350 SX achieves higher torque, better crushing of the material and better mixing performance. The reason for this is the new intermeshing blades: “This new geometry enables better tightening behaviour when handling the material during filling”, adds Hill.
During the measurement, the integrated software shows a so-called “plastogram” in the form of a torque and temperature curve, calculates the mixing energy as well as structural changes of the material.