Fracture behavior of NR and SBR vulcanizates filled with ground rubber having uniform particle size

Abstract

AbstractThe use of recycled rubber including ground scrap vulcanizates in rubber compounds was studied. When ground rubber was incorporated into rubber compounds, the physical properties, especially the tensile strength, were deteriorated compared to the virgin rubber compound. Also, incorporating ground rubber caused a change of the cure behavior via migration of sulfur or an accelerator between the virgin rubber matrix and the ground rubber vulcanizate. In this study, the fracture behavior and abrasion property of carbon black‐filled SBR and NR compounds containing ground rubber vulcanizate were investigated. Also, the effect of the particle size or loading volume of ground rubber powder on those properties was studied. Four different sizes, 420–600, 177–250, 125–150, and 75–88 μm, of ambient ground rubber powder recycled from waste tire were selected and used in the compounding. The loading amounts of ground rubber powder were 10, 30, and 50 phr. The flex crack growth of SBR‐ and NR‐based compounds was altered by the addition of ground rubber particles. More delayed crack growth was observed with an increasing loading volume and decreasing particle size of the ground rubber powders, and this behavior was more prominent in SBR than in NR compounds. Tangent delta, a direct measure of internal energy dissipation, increased with an increasing loading volume of the ground rubber particles. The abrasion rate of ground rubber‐filled compounds was more dependent on the size of the abrasion pattern than on the loading level or particle size of the ground rubber powders. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 85: 2491–2500, 2002