2010 Cardolite M. T. Harvey Award Winners – Mr. Shigeru Shinoda, Mr. Masayoshi Daio, Mr. Hideki Ishida, Mr. Tetsuji Kawazura
While working as a team at Yokohama Rubber Co in the late 80’s and early 90’s, the group developed a bead filler compound for high performance tires based on polymerized cardanol. Cashew based products were already being used to improve bleeding on the surface of green rubber, but the cardanol based product gave an extremely high hardness after vulcanization while keeping the viscosity of the compound low during processing. Mr. Shigeru Shinoda, Mr. Masayoshi Daio, Mr. Hideki Ishida, and Mr. Tetsuji Kawazura were named as the inventors in the Japanese patent application of October 8, 1991 and were granted a US patent on November 30, 1993. This technology continues to be an important part of current tire manufacturing.
