Mathematics
Goodyear 1
Modeling the tan Delta Spectrum
Student Researchers: Norman Israel, Hannah Dauber, Robert Taylor
Faculty Advisor: John David (Mathematics)
In rubber, the Tan Delta spectrum is the ratio between loss and storage modulus which contains information about the mechanical properties of rubber. In 1986, K.H Nordsiek found that various parts of the tan Delta spectrum were diagnostic of various tire performance features related to the tread compound. He believed that ideal tread compound performance could be realized through mixtures of rubbers.
The AMRE research team developed a model to predict the tan Delta spectrum from the experimental data on the tire ingredients. The team used Neural Networks to do this, repeatedly creating and training various networks to get better prediction each time, finally creating an optimal predictive model. The team was also able to use the networks to identify the important tire ingredients for tan Delta value.
This research is important to Goodyear because it improves on previous approaches they used for modeling the spectrum. This can reduce the amount of time they spend on testing. The work done by this research team also provides valuable information to guide future research done by Goodyear (such as with the ranking of the ingredients according to importance). The work on confidence bands for the prediction also offers Goodyear new predictive ability.