A double-exposure digital holographic interferometry is proposed to use in the inspection of the air bubble defect in radial tires. A series of digital holograms recording the initial state and deformation state of a radial tire are recorded in a computer,then the reconstructed images are obtained by the computer. In comparison with the interference fringes between the deformed wave-front and undeformed wave-front from the defective tires and the regular tires,the characteristics of the interference fringes and phase distribution from different tires are obtained and the detection rules are established. The results show that the double-exposure digital holographic interference fringes in the air bubble defect area have special features,which indicates the proposed method can be used in tire defect inspection in high precision,and the horizontal resolution of the system is 16.4 μm.