Tire technology: Cooper's tech center driving success

FINDLAY, Ohio—Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. focused its global research and development efforts into one center 18 months ago. So far it is paying off.

The company's Global Technical Center, located in Findlay, opened in July 2015 and represents a $35.5 million investment. While it rests in the same location as the firm's North and South American center, it is not to be confused with it or the two other regional centers the firm operates in Melksham, England, for Europe; and Kunshan, China, for Asia.

The global center has a more broad focus on new technology and tools while the other three centers focus on developing new products specific for their regions. Specifically, the global center is tackling a number of challenges that the tire industry faces in the coming years. According to Chuck Yurkovich, vice president of global research and development, those include two main areas—developing alternative, domestic sources of natural rubber and new materials that can enhance lightweighting capabilities.

“The Global Technical Center is the center of excellence for what we would call advanced materials—things that we know we're going to need: Fuel efficient materials, lighter weight materials, better performing materials,” Yurkovich said. “We develop those and put them on the shelf so when the regional centers need them, they can draw from those.

“The advantage we have is that the development teams in the regional centers still work on products, but they use the shelf technology that we develop centrally at the global center,” he added.

“That essentially gives you ready technology that you don't have to develop regionally. You just plug it in. It helps you shorten the development cycle and bring products to market much more quickly.”

Cooper's network of technical centers aims to tackle significant future challenges facing the tire industry, which Yurkovich said includes:

• Lighter weight tires that perform equal to or better than current products will continue to be a major emphasis for the tire industry;
• Improved fuel economy and rolling resistance is going to continue to be very important;
• New tire concepts associated with autonomous vehicles; and
• Customer demands on a region-by-region basis, either an original equipment or a replacement customer.

“It's a pretty complicated equation when you put it together,” Yurkovich said. “I can assure you we won't run out of things to do in the tire industry over the next 50 years or more.”

The executive highlighted two recent success stories, the first of which came out of a $1.5 million Department of Energy grant to develop lightweight, fuel- efficient tires. He said the goal of the program was to develop a prototype tire that reduced weight by at least 20 percent and improve vehicle fuel economy by at least 3 percent.

When the project wrapped up in 2015, the executive said Cooper boosted average fuel efficiency by 5.5 percent, about 1.5 times that of the goal, and reduced weight anywhere from 23-37 percent in concept tires.

“We consider that to be a big success because it opened a lot of doors for future direction that we continue to work on,” Yurkovich said.

“We've actually deployed some of the modeling and testing and predictive technology that came out of that program into our current development process as well.”

The firm also is working with both guayule and the Russian dandelion TKS to produce a domestic, alternative source of natural rubber through a Biomass Research and Development Initiative grant worth $6.9 million. The program began in 2012 and runs through mid-2017.

Cooper and guayule developer PanAridus L.L.C. hosted a ride-and-drive at Cooper's Pearsall, Texas, vehicle test center in 2015 that demonstrated experimental tires using multiple components made solely of guayule rubber produced by PanAridus.

“There's almost a universal approach to head in the same direction, although the standards may vary,” Yurkovich said. “For us, we have a group that's looking at new technology that accelerates that process in the global tech center and then the regional tech centers to meet those needs utilizing those materials. It works very efficiently.

“But if you don't have the development, or the organization, at some point you run out of steam. You just can't keep going to meet those needs.”