Elastomers and Short Fibers

Filling an elastomer with short fibers essentially involves combining the viscoelastic behavior of a rubber matrix with the strength and stiffness of the fiber, in order to obtain useful engineering materials. Reinforcing elastomers 

Extensive reviews on short fibers-reinforced elastomers have been published by Goettler and Shen, ° and more recently by Rajeev. Table 7.11 is a list of selected published works on natural fiber-filled rubber composites, sorted by rubber type. Only vulcanizable rubbers were considered in preparing the table thermoplastic rubber and rubber-plastics blends were omitted. As can be seen most grades of conventional elastomers have been considered with quite a large variety of natural fibers. Natural Rubber, SBR, and EPDM compounds have received much attention, as expected with respect to their industrial importance. A bonding system is us in most cases, with resin types (i.e. resorcinol-formaldehyde, resorcinol-hexamethylenetetramine, sil-ica-resorcinol-hexamethylenetetramine) the most frequent ones. 

Selected Published Works on Natural Fiber Filled Rubber Composites (Vulcanizable Rubbers only) 

R-F resorcinol-formaldehyde R-H resorcinol-hexamethylenetetramine S-R-H silica-resorcinol-hexamethylenetetramine TESPT bis(3-triethoxysilylpropyl)tetrasulfane. 

Whatever are the natural fiber and the rubber type, qualitatively the same results are always reported when increasing the short fiber content  

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