Evaluation of cord/rubber adhesion by a new fatigue test method

Abstract

AbstractPolymer adhesion and its evaluation are important from academic and industrial points of view. Today cords are used to reinforce rubber in various products. Cord–rubber adhesion can be evaluated using static and dynamic methods. The static methods are commonly used for qualification of raw materials. These methods are not suitable for prediction of durability of the cord/rubber system in real conditions. The dynamic adhesion tests (e.g., fatigue method) involve some important parameters to simulate the real conditions of cord/rubber composite usage. So they produce reliable results in comparison with static adhesion results. Increase in temperature of cord/rubber system occurs during utilization of product. Adhesion usually decreases with increasing temperature. So the static adhesion test (e.g., H‐pull test) results that are measured in the ambient temperature (23 ± 2°C) cannot be considered as the composite's performance in the utilization condition. Although heat build up occurs in the test samples during the fatigue test procedure, but this is not enough to illustrate the decreasing effect of the increased temperature on the results. The authors produced a heat chamber to improve the dynamic test. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 101: 2488–2494, 2006