Energy-based correlation of friction mechanisms and wear in tire tread compounds

The rapid growth of electric vehicles (EVs) has increased tire-tread wear because higher load and instantaneous torque generate elevated vertical and tangential stresses. Rubber friction consists of two physically distinct mechanisms – adhesion, governed by real contact area, and hysteresis, governed by viscoelastic energy dissipation – each responding differently to slip velocity, temperature, and multiscale roughness. However, previous studies could not quantitatively separate these contributions because the required viscoelastic, roughness, friction, and wear data were not acquired under matched conditions and were rarely integrated within a unified physics-based framework, leading to reliance on total friction coefficients. Although theoretical models such as Klüppel – Heinrich and Persson establish the basis for adhesion and hysteresis friction, experimental studies have rarely extended these frameworks to mechanism-specific energy-to-wear correlations. This study extends the Klüppel – Heinrich (KH) friction model to compute adhesion- and hysteresis-related frictional-energy rates and correlates them with LAT-100 abrasion results. Adhesion energy exhibited a stronger correlation with wear, supporting a physics-based framework for EV-specific tread-wear prediction within the investigated compound – surface configuration.