KD_CBD: A novel software for kinematic design of collapsible tire building drums

Collapsible tire building drums are widely used in tire manufacturing. A collapsible drum consists of several similar segments. Layers of a raw tire are assembled on the drum in its open state. Then the drum collapses into its folded state by means of an internal mechanism, so that, the raw tire can be removed from the drum. The design of a collapsible building drum involves many parameters, such as drum diameter, collapse ratio, number of segments and bid diameter. The dimension designation of a collapsible building drum for a new tire with specific geometry and attaining a larger value of collapse ratio are important for tire production industries. Design process of a collapsible building drum for a desired tire is a complicated and timeconsuming task. The computer software KD_CBD has been developed to simplify the design process of a collapsible tire building drums. This software has been coded in MATLAB environment by which, design of a tire building drum with arbitrary dimensions and with desired number of segments can be performed easily. Moreover, the designer can introduce any desired constrains to the software to obtain an optimum solution based on its specific application.