The Impact of Overloading on Commercial Vehicle Tires: From Microscopic Fracture to Macroscopic Failure

Overloading a truck by 10% can shorten the service life of its tires by 28%, which hides a complex material failure process:

Microscopic damage accumulation

Cord breakage: Each polyester cord can withstand a tensile force of 150N. When an overload causes a single cord to be subjected to a force exceeding 200N, the molecular chains begin to break

Rubber cracking: Dynamic bending causes microcracks inside the rubber, and the crack propagation speed increases by 4 times under overload conditions

Steel wire fatigue: Under overpressure environment, the displacement of metal lattice increases and the fatigue strength decreases by 37% for the belt layer steel wire

Visible warning signals

Stepwise wear of tire shoulder: indicating imbalance in suspension axle load distribution

Circular bulge: a prominent feature of at least 5 broken cords inside

Abnormal temperature rise: After driving for 2 hours with a vehicle exceeding the load limit, the tire body temperature can reach 90 ℃ (safety threshold of 75 ℃)

Scientific maintenance suggestions

Use a laser locator to detect tire contact marks on a monthly basis, and the ideal contact surface should be a uniform rectangle

Install tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS), which will automatically sound an alarm when the pressure fluctuation exceeds ± 0.2 bar

Establish a tire "health record" to record the mileage, repair, and replacement history data of each tire