Tire Society stays true to mission, industry

CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio — Entering its fifth decade, the non-profit Tire Society, based just outside Akron, has held true to its original mission since it was born in April 1980 — to disseminate critical and often groundbreaking information on tire science.

The list of its founders and members reads like a "who's who" of the tire science industry. Through industry resistance and perseverance, with a focus on safety and the consumer, these luminaries have crafted the Tire Society's unique role in the broad subject of "tire science."

Ostensibly, the 200-person Tire Society is dedicated to overall tire technology and science. But society members know that material testing science and the physics of the tire, rather than the chemistry of rubber compounding, is the cornerstone of the organization.

The topic du jour might come and go, from rolling resistance to wet traction analytics, but the thrust of the organization has not changed as it continues to bring objective, reasoned, and perhaps most importantly, peer-reviewed technical papers to the fore.

It is the only organization in the world with this mission, and its value is as important today as it was when it was formed by a handful of movers and shakers, led by Dr. F. Cecil Brenner, the famed fiber and textile research chemist who worked for Johnson & Johnson, the Chemstrand Research Center and later the National Bureau of Standards in Washington D.C.

"We went through some lean times, with pressure from the industry and times where we had negative cash flow and waning membership. But this is why we exist, to offer professional knowledge that becomes permanent literature," Bob Pelle, president of the Tire Society from 1999-2000 and a senior research and development associate with Goodyear, said. "What makes the Tire Society unique is that papers are critically reviewed, peer-reviewed, knowing that if you are reading one you can take that information to the bank.

"You can find things online, but you never know (the) quality of what people are telling you. These papers have been through the gauntlet and passed muster — and if you are an author, you can be proud of it."

The Tire Society, described by one member as the embodiment of the intersection of research and development and academia, offers two avenues for its technical information: through its Tire Science and Technology Journal, which precedes the Tire Society itself, and through its annual Tire Society Conference.

"We have the more immediate conference and the more academic approach with our journal of record," Mr. Pelle said. "We have been lucky to have been led by people who understand that. For 40 years, the mission has been constant. The science has matured, as has the mix of papers. To some extent, the industry has shrunk.

"But the right people are still uplifting the industry. We have been really lucky to have this same set of volunteers year after year. I can't say enough about my colleagues."

There are about 200 current members of the Tire Society, and about 180 registered for this year's conference, which took place virtually Aug. 30 through Sept. 3. The international representation is indicative of current Tire Society President Will Mars' push to make the organization truly global once again.

"We really wanted to secure participation from more OEMs this year, and we've done that," Mr. Mars said. "When it's only competitors talking, it's harder to get people to engage about the latest and greatest ideas. When we can pull in the OEMs and academia and suppliers, the conversations just flow better.

"There are important conversations going on about how simulation will be used to facilitate engineering communications between OEMs and suppliers."

The Tire Society's eclectic membership comprises technical tire organizations, automotive OEMs, academics, federal and independent suppliers and tire developers, with 18 different countries represented.

In his 89-page compendium documenting the Tire Society's last 40 years, "40 Years and More of Tire Science and Technology: A History of the Tire Society," published in June, Bridgestone Americas Inc.'s Jim McIntyre (current vice president of the Tire Society) notes that the organization has remained true to its founding tenets.

Mr. McIntyre's history already is being celebrated as a pillar of the Tire Society moving forward, as important to the group's legacy as the quarterly journal and the conference.

"In 1982, the Tire Society held its first annual conference on Tire Science and Technology," Mr. McIntyre writes. "Nearly 40 years later, the society has been through many changes, but the journal, the annual conference and the core mission of encouraging and disseminating knowledge about tire science and technology remain.

"How did this come to be, and how and why have the society and its journal continued to grow and evolve for nearly 50 years?"

Rocking the boat, pushing for safety

The Tire Society began out of a push for public safety standards — and implementing safety standards means increased regulations.

The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, the Highway Safety Act and the creation of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration all occurred in the 1960s, and the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act were passed in 1970 and 1972, respectively

Tire safety legislation was smack in the middle, for better or for worse. It might be self-evident, but not every major auto maker (or tire maker) was flush on the idea of increased government regulation.

"(F. Cecil) Brenner was singularly influential in this," said Jerry Potts, president of the Tire Society from 2019-2020 and former president of Test Measurement Systems Inc. "He attended Society of Automotive Engineers meetings and he could see that it was being run by General Motors — and whatever they wanted, tire companies were saying, 'yes sir, we'll do it.'

"There was no thought toward the consumer to improve tires to make them safer, only to sell tires."

As such, Mr. Brenner, whose legacy is rooted in the development of the Uniform Tire Quality Grading System, formed the Technical Advisory Committee for Tires, or TACT, seeing the need for both auto maker and tire manufacturer involvement in the grading system development process.

In place between 1967 and 1970, TACT essentially was the first iteration of the Tire Society — with eight members, including Mr. Brenner as chairman; Samuel Clark of the University of Michigan; Jack Davisson of Goodyear; Fred Kovac of Goodyear; Von Polhemus of General Motors; I. Robert Ehrlich of the Stevens Institute of Technology; Joe Walter of the Bridgestone/Firestone Technical Research Center; and Alan Veith.

"I was the new guy on the committee with seasoned tire veterans," Mr. Walter told Rubber News Aug. 25.

With his newly minted Ph.D. from Virginia Tech, Mr. Walter had just begun work at the Firestone Technical Research Center in 1966.

"And two years later, I am on this high-powered committee with Freddie Kovac, Cecil and Sam Clark," Mr. Walter said.

Like his TACT colleagues, Mr. Walter is an industry mover and shaker, rising to become president and managing director of the Bridgestone/Firestone Technical Center in Rome, retiring in 1999 after 34 years with the company.

And like many Tire Society founders and members, Mr. Walter is an academic, teaching graduate-level classes at the University of Akron in vehicle dynamics and polymer behavior through finite element analysis.

Around 1970, this small but groundbreaking group of industry scientists saw the necessity for a space beholden only to the scientific study of tires.

As such, the second iteration of what would become the Tire Society took shape, as the American Society for Testing and Materials' tire offshoot, ASTM F-9, was formed in 1971, with Mr. Brenner as its first chairman.

ASTM F-9 had two primary purposes, according to Mr. Walter, including the development of technical standards; and as a forum to push scientific tire research.

Beginning in 1973, ASTM F-9 published the first versions of the Tire and Technology Journal, but ceased doing so in 1978 "unless the committee could guarantee a sales volume of at least 500 issues and a more regular publication schedule," according to Mr. McIntyre's history.

"There was a dispute as to whether there should be a scholarly journal on tires," Mr. Potts said. "Cecil wanted this, but some in ASTM did not.

"So Cecil took it out and started the Tire Society to host conventions, foster research and have a group that would contribute to journal."

The Tire Society saw its nascence in between 1979 and 1980 (while the journal was on hiatus). The society was incorporated in April 1980, with its focus on safety standards, certainly, but with an equally important inheritance of keeping the journal alive.

"Several senior members of F-09 including Mr. Brenner, Mr. Livingston, Mr. Kovac and Samuel Clark, felt that the journal could continue to serve a useful purpose," Mr. McIntyre states. "A decision was made to form a separate organization that would continue the symposia and publication of the journal."

Kovac, a Goodyear vice president, arranged for Goodyear to assist in the creation of the society, and Goodyear provided both legal and financial assistance in its creation.

The original Tire Society trustees were Daniel Livingston (who served as the first journal editor), Alan Gent of the University of Akron (who named the Tire Society after Mr. Walter's admittedly long-winded moniker was shot down) and Harold Schwartz of DuPont. Schwartz became the first president of the society.

The first Tire Society conference was conducted in March 1982, during the University of Akron's spring break when Shrank South Lecture Hall could be made available. For 15 years, the conference was held there, featuring such keynote speakers as Charles Pilliod of Goodyear, Leopoldo Pirelli and Francois Michelin.

"This was physics-extended, and the Tire Society filled that void," Mr. Walter said, though he adds that initially, the Tire Society was led by a "preponderance of chemists." "(Former Tire Society President) Marion Pottinger was doing research at Bridgestone that was purely material science — this is what it should be. The industry was doing a fine job in chemistry, but not in physics.

"I never thought the Tire Society would reach the intellectual maturity level that it has achieved," he said. "There was no three- or five-year plan, everything was year-at-a-time in our planning."

The journal

Tire Science and Technology is essential to the Tire Society and the tire industry, but finding someone to print it had its challenges over four decades.

"Before the Tire Society, there just wasn't much in the middle of the chain," Mr. Potts said. "Companies were jumping clean over laboratory and material testing, going straight from chemistry and putting the chemistry right on the road."

When ASTM F-9 "cut the cord" on the journal, as Mr. Walter said, Goodyear Aerospace published it free of charge from 1979 to 1985.

Publishing moved briefly to Lancaster Press in Pennsylvania in the late 1980s, and Allen Press publishes the journal today.

"This is why we produce an annual conference and a scientific journal," Mr. Mars, president of Findlay, Ohio-based Endurica L.L.C., said. "Although many of the member companies compete in the marketplace, the society's members recognize that the private interests of the tire industry rest partly on a foundation of shared scientific knowledge.

"The mission to update and maintain this knowledge is fulfilled best by the scientists and engineers who develop it and who depend on it."

The industries from which the society sources its papers are as varied as its membership, with tire companies at 33% of the total authorship; OEMs at 11%; academia at 41%; and suppliers at 15%.

"A big part of what we do is to share, select, polish and distribute the most important work each year," Mr. Mars said.

This year there were 39 abstract submissions, of which 27 were selected for presentation. The society will publish roughly 16 of these (depending on peer review results) in the journal.

"After presentation, each paper goes through a peer review process that is managed by an editorial board made up of 12 of the most experienced tire scientists in the world. The goal is to make sure we capture the best of the best work each year and put it into a form that is easily located and recalled," Mr. Mars said.

Mr. Livingston, following the initial publication in 1973, stated that the Rubber Division of the American Chemical Society expressed concern that papers would be diverted from their own journal, Rubber Chemistry and Technology.

"But we maintained that the result would be that more papers would be written — which is what eventually happened as (Tire Science and Technology) became recognized," Mr. Livingston said.

For a six-year period between 2003 and 2009, Mr. Mars and Tire Society Editor Farhad Tabaddor created a web-based archive of journal articles and the transition to a digital system, a catalog that is now managed by Tire Society Editor Michael Kaliske of Technische Universitat in Dresden, Germany.

"In the late 1990s and early 2000s, many scientific journals transitioned to online distribution," Mr. Mars said. "To keep the society's journal relevant and competitive, it was necessary to respond to this trend."

One of the biggest challenges during this transition was how to address institutional subscriptions. There only were individual subscriptions with print.

"Because the digital format is so easily shareable, it was important to implement a licensing model that would allow organizations to share digital journal content with all of their engineers," Mr. Mars said. "And we had to balance that against the imperative to maintain adequate funding to produce the journal."

The solution came in 2008, when the society introduced an institutional price point that is higher than an individual subscription — but it confers the right to share the articles within the organization.

Scientific publishing has continued to evolve over the years, and just last year the society had to respond to the trend toward "open access" publishing.

"We've actually implemented a hybrid model where, after peer review, authors are offered a choice between the traditional subscriber-funded model (no cost to the author, but distribution limited to subscribers) and the new open access model (author pays publication fee, and distribution is unlimited)," Mr. Mars said.

Regardless of the publisher, whether in print or online, the content of the journal has gone as the industry technology has dictated, from tire testing methods to tire material behavior to tire physics to vehicle dynamics.

"One of the key recurring themes through the years has been computer simulation," Mr. Mars said. "Since I started attending, I've seen finite element analysis in particular grow from a niche topic used by a few researchers into a full-blown, commercially supported, routine activity practiced by many engineers and applied on every new product."

Mr. Pelle said "what clicked for him" was the notion that tires are designed using knowledge from each company — but the physics is out there to be discovered.

"I learned a lot going to conferences, seeing what they were doing, really interacting and asking questions," he said. "As an industry we moved forward with simulations, and finite element analysis is an important part of this. It is a niche that was filled by filled by Cecil Brenner and others — and I think the Tire Society has continued to fill that niche quite well over the years."

Ownership of intellectual property has been an issue as well, a challenge that in some cases has caused a decrease in membership, Mr. Potts said.

"When government was not so instrumental, membership dwindled," Mr. Potts said. "It was left to the OEMs like Ford and GM to attract tire companies — and even they dropped out. Why do I want to parade my compounding secrets in front of the world?

"But with the Tire Society, I get more ideas than I give up. We need to get OEMs back to build membership."

Mr. Mars noted that with the conference and the journal as the chief expenditures, and dues as the chief revenue (along with offsetting revenue from the conference), the Tire Society's mission can be tough to sustain.

Perhaps if the pandemic abates, the society can meet in person in 2022 for the first time in three years, bringing some of the top minds in the tire design and manufacturing industry together once again.

"We are a global society, trying to reach out to rest of the world," Mr. Pelle said. "On a personal level, it's a bit like a reunion. We missed that with the pandemic. But the network access is something that is very beneficial.

"We are looking forward to that again next year, coming back to Akron in a big way."