Michelin Introduces New Particle Analysis System

Tire maker reaches a new milestone with a cutting-edge light particle analysis system and shares initial research results with the scientific community and industry.

For the last 20 years, Michelin has been committed to reducing tire abrasion and to research on wear particles.  At  last month’s Tire Technology Expo 2024, Michelin took its research to a new level with a new particle analysis system for analyzing small  emitted particles from tires, called “SAMPLE”.

The system captures, sorts, counts and characterizes particles close up to tires with unequalled precision and reproducibility.  This analysis system, presented at Tire Technology, opens the way to tires with wear particles totally bio-assimilable by nature.

Tire wear particles are on average the size of a human hair and form a complex mixture composed of equal parts of a combination of tire rubber, minerals and other components of the road. Today, there are questions being raised about tire and road wear particles. This new analysis system will be a fundamental step in better understanding the environmental impact of wear particles to innovate and devise new solutions. Michelin said.

This innovation is a further step in Michelin’s  efforts to address the issue.  Through support for tougher Euro 7 standards, the recent inauguration of a laboratory to find new concrete solutions to make wear particles bio-assimilable by the environment and the acknowledged performance of Michelin tires in terms of abrasion, the company is enhancing knowledge about tire and road wear particles and choosing the side of solutions.

Michelin’s newly inaugurated “BioDLab” laboratory, dedicated to the study of the degradation and biodegradation of tire rubber aims to gain a better understanding of the process by which tires deteriorate as a result of their use, and to develop technical solutions to the environmental problems posed by wear particles resulting from contact between the road and the tire.

Finally, Michelin has made this system for analyzing emitted light particles available to the tire industry and to ETRMA (European Tyre & Rubber Manufacturers’ Association).  ETRMA will conduct a campaign of measurements on a larger scale with the aid of an independent third party. It will be launched during 2024 for a duration of around 18 months.

© Scrap Tire News, April 2024