{
  "abstract": "Annually about one billion tires reach the end of life. Rubber from waste tires can be ground into particles and incorporated into a matrix. In practice, the resulting composites are commonly not recycled into new tires, but downcycled into low-value products such as sport surfaces, indoor flooring, and rubberized asphalt. Recycling waste tires into new tires remains a challenge. In particular, such composites typically have low strength, especially when the particle content is high or the particles are large. A single waste tire particle may act as a flaw to initiate macroscopic fracture and knock down the strength of the entire composite. Here we propose the principle of flaw-tolerant recycling. Rather than requiring every particle to be reliable and small, the matrix is designed so that flaw-like particles do not initiate macroscopic fracture. We demonstrate a flaw-tolerant matrix consisting of two intertwined networks: a network of densely entangled and sparsely crosslinked long natural rubber chains, and a percolated network of carbon aggregates. When the flaw-tolerant matrix is incorporated with up to 80 wt% of commercially available waste particles, the resulting composites still maintain strength. The principle of flaw-tolerant recycling may aid the development of recycling waste tires into new tires.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2610.25572",
  "author_total": 8,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Chenghai Li"
    },
    {
      "name": "Yu Zhou"
    },
    {
      "name": "Zheqi Chen"
    },
    {
      "name": "Jun Ho Min"
    },
    {
      "name": "Matthew Wei Ming Tan"
    },
    {
      "name": "Masako Yoshihara Yang"
    },
    {
      "name": "Yakov Kutsovsky"
    },
    {
      "name": "Zhigang Suo"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/2hqfgc8qj06gd.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2610.25572",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "2hqfgc8qj06gd",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.25572",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "LicenseRef-arXiv-nonexclusive-1.0",
  "licence_label": "arXiv licence",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "cond-mat.soft"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "2507|Polymer crystallization and properties"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7223015518",
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.25572",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-18",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/2hqfgc8qj06gd.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:30:52Z",
      "native_id": "2610.25572",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.25572"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:cond-mat.soft",
      "subfield": "condensed-matter"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Flaw-tolerant recycling of waste tires into high-performance rubber",
  "title_text": "Flaw-tolerant recycling of waste tires into high-performance rubber",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:33:41Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/2hqfgc8qj06gd",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}