Technical Material Diagnostics - Fracture Mechanics of Filled Elastomer Blends

Abstract

This publication contains results of different mechanical and fracture mechanics investigations with elastomeric materials. The aims of the work were the characterization of the influence of the structure on the mechanical and fracture mechanical properties as a basis for the establishment of practically usable structure-property relationships as well as the further clarification of the crack processes themselves. The experimental investigations included fracture tests under quasi-static and under impact-like loading conditions. For the experiments, different elastomeric materials were selected: filler-reinforced styrene-butadiene rubber, ethylene-propylene-diene rubber and natural rubber model vulcanizates as well as related blends. Beside various mechanical tests such as tensile test, dynamic mechanical analysis, hardness testing and tear tests, fracture mechanics investigations under quasi-static and impact-like loading conditions were performed. Here, especially the impact tests with variation of the test temperature are new in this field. The quasi-static tests included single- and multi-specimen tests with the aim of recording crack resistance curves. From these results, the materials’ resistance against stable crack initiation and propagation was determined. Additionally, comprehensive microfractographic investigations were performed with the aim of a reliable and reproducible quantitative description of the fracture surfaces as the basis for an adequate characterization of the fracture process zone for example.KeywordsFiller ContentElastomeric MaterialFracture Mechanic ParameterStable Crack PropagationNatural Rubber VulcanizateThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.