The hidden cost of tyres

Every day, billions of people across the world make journeys in vehicles that have tyres.  And each of these journeys comes at a cost – both to the vehicle and to the environment.  

Tyres account for around 25% of a vehicle's energy consumption, primarily through rolling resistance, the force that slows the vehicle down as it rolls across the road surface. This means that developing and manufacturing high-quality tyres is critical to fuel efficiency as well as vehicle safety. 

A lesser tackled element of tyre use is the invisible legacy they leave behind. As tyres grip the road during braking, cornering and acceleration, and through general abrasion and wear processes, they shed particles that contribute to air, soil and water pollution.   

For tyre manufacturers, this presents a complex challenge – how can they make tyres:  

• more energy efficient 

• more durable and sustainable 

• remain safe and retain their grip? 

Professor James Busfield and his team at Queen Mary University of London set out to address this challenge by investigating tyre wear at the molecular level. For more than a decade, they have been developing laboratory methods that replicate the interaction between tyre treads and road surfaces under more realistic driving conditions, allowing them to study the underlying mechanisms that govern wear, grip, abrasion and energy loss.  

Investigating tyres at the molecular level 

Queen Mary researchers have developed novel testing methods that recreate the repeated impacts, pressures and friction experienced by tyres on real roads. The team has also investigated how different rubber compounds, reinforcing materials such as carbon black, and tread designs influence wear, grip and energy efficiency at both the microscopic and molecular level.

This work has revealed why some tyre compounds perform well in certain conditions but abrade rapidly in others.  

Collaborating to make an impact  

Through well-established collaborations with industry partners, Professor Busfield and his team’s work is providing manufacturers with new tools to optimise tyre materials for specific environments and applications. Rather than relying solely on lengthy road trials, companies can now use more representative laboratory testing to predict performance earlier in the development cycle. 

This deeper understanding is helping industry move beyond simply measuring wear towards predicting and controlling it. Manufacturers are using these insights from Queen Mary research to develop new generations of tyres that are more durable, more energy efficient and capable of generating a lower volume of wear debris throughout their lifetime, without compromising safety or performance. 

Professor Busfield's research is already influencing tyre development programmes worldwide. Collaborations with companies including Continental, Sumitomo Rubber Industries and Birla Carbon have helped translate scientific discoveries into practical improvements in tyre formulation, testing and performance. The team's work has also informed advanced modelling tools used in motorsport and high-performance vehicle development. 

Looking beyond performance

It is estimated that tyre wear debris particles may account for between 25% and 40% of microplastic pollution entering oceans, waterways and marine ecosystems. As shown by other research from Queen Mary academics, these microplastics significantly damages marine plants and wildlife and have a long-lasting negative impact on our waterways. In addition, particles released from tyre wear can lead to air pollution which among other things, has been shown by Queen Mary academics to stunt lung growth in children.   

Professor Busfield and his team therefore decided to look beyond improving tyre performance to also ask the question of what happens tyre particles after they are released, and how are they impact the environment.  

The team's research has revealed that tyre wear particles are chemically and physically different from the original tyre material and continue to change as they interact with the environment. Their studies showed that once released, these particles undergo processes such as oxidation and structural reorganisation, altering their properties over time. 

This matters because the composition of a tyre wear particle influences how long it persists in the environment, how it interacts with air, water and soil, and whether it releases other chemicals as it ages. By understanding these processes in much greater detail, Queen Mary researchers can provide manufacturers with insights that support the design of tyre compounds that wear more slowly, produce fewer particles and potentially reduce their environmental impact. 

This team is also one of the pioneering groups in Europe studying "smear wear", a phenomenon in which tyre surfaces develop a smooth protective layer during certain driving conditions. Their research has shown that understanding and enabling through careful compound design for these wear mechanisms to occur in service could significantly reduce material loss from tyre surfaces, helping to minimise the release of harmful particles and microplastics into the environment and simultaneously extending tyre lifespan. 

In addition, the researchers are exploring new methods to chemically recycle end-of-life tyres, tackling one of the tyre industry's biggest sustainability challenges. Around 26 million tonnes of waste tyres are generated globally each year, yet tyre rubber is notoriously difficult to recycle because the polymer chains are chemically crosslinked together. Professor Busfield's team is developing innovative ways to break and reform these crosslinks under specific processing conditions to create materials that can be recycled to manufacture new tyres. By helping turn waste tyres back into a valuable resource, the research could support a more circular tyre industry while reducing both waste and demand for new raw materials. 

Together, these advances are helping create tyres that last longer, waste fewer resources, generate fewer emissions and place a smaller burden on the environment. By looking beyond traditional measures of tyre performance and investigating the entire lifecycle of tyre materials, Queen Mary researchers are helping shape a cleaner and more sustainable future for transport.