rubber/steel friction..traction

[morgan]

help...we are a small engineering company making go karts that will be running on a steel track...except that they dont! virtually no traction/grip with even soft compound tyres, may be part of the problem is that the steel track is always cold...and so are the tyres...also the tyres seem to be shedding a fine dust that also act as sliders...so the result is very slidy and no traction...we are thinking of bonding some type of ployuethene to the tyre to give better traction???

oh and we cant make the surface of the steel rough either, so it is pretty smooth...

any ideas? any experience?

thanks in advance..

morgan

[Gordon]

Hi Morgan

to the Surface Engineering Forum.

I'm no real expert on the tyre side but I think the only way to get significant traction/adhesion will be by treating the steel track surface.

[SimonH]

Good afternoon Morgan,

A possible solution would be to arc spray a traction coating onto the steel. Using an arc spray system with a special nozzle an applicator can apply a rough steel coating onto your existing surface to give grip - this is the sort of thing that you might see on the brake testing rollers when you take your car for an MOT. If you want to contact me I can point you in the direction of a couple of companies capable of giving you some cost estimates.

Best regards

[morgan]

(12-02-2009 04:58 PM)SimonH Wrote:  Good afternoon Morgan,

A possible solution would be to arc spray a traction coating onto the steel. Using an arc spray system with a special nozzle an applicator can apply a rough steel coating onto your existing surface to give grip - this is the sort of thing that you might see on the brake testing rollers when you take your car for an MOT. If you want to contact me I can point you in the direction of a couple of companies capable of giving you some cost estimates.

Best regards

---

ok thanks for that...sorry i should have given a bit more info...we cannot really do much with the steel track as it carries the electric supply to the go karts...which pick it up using brushes directly from the track...if the surface of the track is 'roughed up' the the brushes wear out!
and its a very large expanse of steel...hundreds of sqaure meters...

we are looking at bonding differeing polymers to an existing rubber go kart tyre to see if we can can get both better traction and also prevent shedding of the rubber which produces a very fine dust, it is this that we believe is one of the reasons we have no traction...and also temperature...the tyres never heat up as the steel track acts as a huge haet heat sink..

heh ho..

back to the drawing board

robin...

[djewell]

(12-03-2009 11:09 AM)morgan Wrote:  ok thanks for that...sorry i should have given a bit more info...we cannot really do much with the steel track as it carries the electric supply to the go karts...which pick it up using brushes directly from the track...if the surface of the track is 'roughed up' the the brushes wear out!
and its a very large expanse of steel...hundreds of sqaure meters...

we are looking at bonding differeing polymers to an existing rubber go kart tyre to see if we can can get both better traction and also prevent shedding of the rubber which produces a very fine dust, it is this that we believe is one of the reasons we have no traction...and also temperature...the tyres never heat up as the steel track acts as a huge haet heat sink..

heh ho..

back to the drawing board

robin...

Bicycle brakes have the same requirements. Try contacting some of the smaller brake manufacturers and ask them about formulations of durable, high friction elastomers to use on your tires. It could be a very easy project for them.