Flaw-tolerant recycling of waste tires into high-performance rubber
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.
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BibTeX
@misc{li2026flawtolerant,
title = {{Flaw-tolerant recycling of waste tires into high-performance rubber}},
author = {Chenghai Li and Yu Zhou and Zheqi Chen and Jun Ho Min and Matthew Wei Ming Tan and Masako Yoshihara Yang and Yakov Kutsovsky and Zhigang Suo},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.25572},
eprint = {2610.25572},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.25572},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Flaw-tolerant recycling of waste tires into high-performance rubber
AU - Chenghai Li
AU - Yu Zhou
AU - Zheqi Chen
AU - Jun Ho Min
AU - Matthew Wei Ming Tan
AU - Masako Yoshihara Yang
AU - Yakov Kutsovsky
AU - Zhigang Suo
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/18
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.25572
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.25572
AB - 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.
ER -