The tire industry is making increasingly higher demands for low-weight and low-rolling-resistance tires to meet performance and sustainability goals. The application of high-strength steel cord has seen strong growth to meet these requirements. When switching to the higher-strength (UT or even MT) steel cord, with the reduction of steel weight and thinner ply gauge, whether the tire stiffness is compromised remains a question. In this study, finite element simulation has been carried out to look into the effect on stiffness of the change to higher-tensile class steel cord. At first, the simulation is done on the belt ply package. Then the cornering stiffness of a PCR tire using ST and MT ply packages is simulated with a benchmark tire model. The results show that optimum tire stiffness can be retained by optimizing steel cord architecture for lower-weight tires using higher-strength steel cord.

• Higher-tensile steelcord (UT/MT) meets the requirements of low-weight, low-rolling-resistance, low-emission tires.
• With weight reduction of steelcord reinforcement, the question remains whether the stiffness of the tire will be compromised.
• Finite element simulation has been done on ply package and tire models to study this topic.
• The results show that adequate ply package and tire stiffness can be obtained by optimized steelcord and ply design.