Development of High Performance Elastomers with Inorganic Fillers. 3. The Reinforcement Effect of Inorganic Fillers on Mechanical Properties of Vulcanizates

This paper referred to the reinforcement effect of inorganic fillers on mechanical properties of vulcanizates of non self-reinforcement rubber such as SBR. Tensile strength (TB) abruptly became higher with the increase of specific surface area of fillers, whereas tensile modulus was not improved. he increase of TB can be explained by the physical interaction between filler surface and rubber matrix, because the surface energy of filler increases with the decrease the particle size. On the other hand, the chemical interaction is responsible for tensile modulus improvement. Some methods to improve chemical interaction were also discussed.