Abstract

Breker layers in a pneumatic tire are an important part in the tire construction. These layers have a metal cord resulting in substantial bending stiffness. When homogenizing such layers, a “shave” method is applied to the breaker layer. This results in a thinner layer having adequate stiffness in both tension and bending. In this work, a phenomenological approach is used to obtain the effective properties of a homogeneous anisotropic hyper elastic material of an equivalent layer. Two models utilize transverse isotropic or orthotropic potential used to describe the homogenized properties. Comparison is made between these models for the “shaved” rubber-cord layer based on numerical experiments. In both cases, the potentials are built on the basis of the Treloar or Mooney potentials. Note that in the case of an inhomogeneous thin layer, the traditional definition of homogenization needs to be modified. In previous works of the authors, it was proposed to determine 3D averaged elastic properties of a layer by surrounding it with a homogeneous material. This makes it possible to correctly take into account the fact that the boundary effect from the upper to lower surfaces that penetrates through the whole periodicity cell. A set of local problems formulated for the periodicity cell is proposed. This set is sufficient for determining elastic potential material parameters. Nonlinear local problems on a periodic cell are solved and the material constants of the elastic potential are determined. The applicability of the orthotropic potential (second model) is determined for the “shaved” layer. It was found that orthotropic properties are manifested relative to longitudinal shears. The results show the suitability of the proposed potential and the scheme for determining the material parameters.

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