Acta Mechanica Slovaca 2021, 25(3):6-14 | DOI: 10.21496/ams.2021.031

Temperature Dependent Mechanical Properties of Natural and Synthetic Rubber in Practical Structures

Samiul Kaiser¹, Reza Rabbani², Reaz Ahmed², Salim Kaiser^{3, *}

¹ Department of Civil Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh

² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh

³ Directorate of Advisory, Extension and Research Services, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh

In this proposal the mechanical properties of natural and synthetic rubbers are studied under different temperatures both real and ageing heat treatment conditions. For this purpose, tire rubber and bearing pad rubber are considered as they are most governed in natural and synthetic rubber respectively. The experimental results confirm that the impact of real temperature is higher on the mechanical properties than that of ageing temperature because of ambient temperature aggravate thermal motion and changes the molecular arrangement of rubber other than the ageing samples recovers the mechanical properties during breezy. Except hardness, all the cases in terms of mechanical properties like tensile strength, elongation, Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio of bearing pad rubber provide the higher performance than the tire rubber. Under ageing treatment condition the degraded mechanical properties recover well by the natural rubber since extremely ordered long chain of the molecular structure. The significant differences in the micrographs of the two rubbers suggest that tire rubber consists of uniform grains because of its highly controlled molecular arrangement. Under heat treatment the microstructure turned rougher and the size of the voids became larger as temperature increases the secondary cross linking reaction which initiate to cracks.

Keywords: rubbers; heat treatment; mechanical properties; microstructure

Received: July 30, 2021; Revised: August 24, 2021; Accepted: August 27, 2021; Published: September 29, 2021  Show citation