VESevo, an innovative device for non-destructive and smart viscoelastic characterization of tires compounds.

Viscoelastic properties of tires compound play a fundamental role into the vehicle dynamics affecting both the vehicle performances and the safety according to different working conditions depending on road roughness and temperature. The knowledge of these properties is usually carried out by means Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA) on compound samples suitable for laboratory conditions, which can be specifically produced for the test or extracted from the tire, causing its destruction. In this scenario, the Applied Mechanics research group of the Department of Industrial Engineering at the Federico II has developed an innovative device, called VESevo, capable of providing a smart and non-destructive characterization of the viscoelastic properties of tires tread compound. The patented technology of the VESevo allows the characterization of the Storage Modulus and the Loss Factor thanks to the build-in high-accuracy sensors, which enable the user to carry out many measurements at different conditions and directly in-situ. The possibility to obtain the compounds viscoelastic response by means of a totally non-destructive and non-invasive procedure, opens scenarios of interest in a very broad panorama of applications ranging from the monitoring of the material performance during its whole lifecycle, to the quantitative analysis of products quality and repeatability of production processes. In this work, the authors present the VESevo technology comparing the results to the ones obtained with the standard Dynamic Mechanical Analysis technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]