Usually getting a flat tire is a stressful process leading to the replacement of that tire and the old tire is discarded. However, a team of scientists is working to make replacing flat tires a thing of the past.
Currently, tires are manufactured using the curing process of vulcanization, which involves adding sulfur or other compounds to the rubber, boosting the durability by forming cross-links between the polymer chains that make up the material. Once those links are broken, they can’t be repaired.
A team of scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Polymer Research (Germany), the Tampere University of Technology (Finland) and the Dresden University of Technology (Germany) is attempting to get around the limited lifespan and usefulness of a tire by getting rid of the vulcanization process altogether.
They’ve discovered that adding a carbon/nitrogen compound has much the same effect, but additionally allows broken polymer links to reform over time.
In lab tests, samples of rubber make using the process were able to heal cuts in themselves at room temperature. Heating the rubber to 212ºF (100ºC) for the first 10 minutes accelerated the process. After a period of 8 days, the healed pieces of rubber were able to withstand pressures of up to 754 pounds per square inch (psi), 20 times the pressure a tire would ever reach.
According to the researchers, the addition of reinforcing agents such as silica or carbon black could boost the self-healing rubber’s strength even further, decreasing the chance of getting a flat tire altogether. If you did get a flat, you could just leave your car parked for a few hours or days.
For those that might need to instantly replace the tire, well, the flat tire will have healed long before you ever need it again.
A paper on the research was recently published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.
