Study of rubber/calcium carbonate composites

Abstract

Abstract Fillers have been widely used in the rubber industry for many applications such as tile floor, vehicle tire, etc. Calcium carbonate (CaCO3) is one of the important inorganic powders and it is widely used as filler in order to reduce the cost in rubber industry. The objective of this study is to investigate physical and mechanical properties of the rubber composites with CaCO3 powder. We studied the CaCO3 additive in natural rubber (NR) with 25, 50, 75 and 100 parts per hundred rubber (phr). The effect of CaCO3 on the properties of rubber composite, such as Mooney viscosity, bound rubber, Mullins effect and Payne effect, was investigated. The result of Mullins effect of rubber composite filled with CaCO3 is in good agreement with the result of bound rubber: higher bound rubber leads to higher stress to pull the rubber composites. The Payne effect shows that the value of different storage moduli (ΔG’) of rubber compound filled with 25 phr CaCO3 is the lowest due to weaker filler network. While, the NR supplemented with 100 phr CaCO3 represents more significant ΔG’ with the strain increasing. This type of material could be applied for tailoring the properties of rubber products.