ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,351,980, issued on July 8, was assigned to NV BEKAERT SA (Zwevegem, Belgium).
"Steel cord for rubber reinforcement" was invented by Aijun Zhang (Jiangyin, China) and Haijun Ma (Jiangyin, China).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The invention provides a steel cord, the steel cord comprises two or more steel filaments, at least one of the steel filaments has a twist pitch of 6 mm to 40 mm, each of the steel filaments has a tip rise of less than 5 mm with a gauge length of 200 mm after being unravelled out of the steel cord. The invention steel cord has an improved straightness with reduced steel filament fracture risk."
The patent was filed on...