An Influence of Test Conditions on Structural Changes of Rubber Membranes Based on Amorphous and Crystalline Polymers

Abstract

The most important task of the rubber industry is the continuous improvement of the quality, reliability and durability of products, including rubber membranes, which are widely used in the automotive, aviation, machine tool, chemical and other industries. Membranes in most cases are operated in difficult loading conditions, which leads to a variety of zones and the nature of potential damage that occurs during their operation. At the same time, when developing a new rubber compounds for membranes, most often the standard methods for determining the mechanical characteristics of rubbers are used, most of which involve testing the material under simple uniaxial tension-compression and do not take into account structural changes in the material during loading. In this work, a study of structural changes in the membranes under loading in a complex stressed state, which was realized by indenting the rubber membrane with a spherical indenter, was conducted. Structural changes were evaluated by hydrostatic weighing. It has been established that in the complex stressed state of rubber based on crystallizing IR rubber, there is no distinct advantage over rubber based on amorphous SBR rubber. Indentation suppresses orientation processes in rubbers based on IR crystallizing rubber, which leads to a significant decrease in their strength properties.