Rupture of Reinforced Elastomers

These workers also showed that the apparent energy of activation of the failure process could be calculated assuming an Arrhenius mechanism. As illustrated in Table 10.3, addition of reinforcing filler raises the apparent activation energy of the viscoelastic failure processes. Halpin and Bueche ascribe the enhanced reinforcement to those processes that spread the viscoelastic motions of the filler-rubber complex over a much wider time scale, and concluded that the lower strength observed at elevated temperatures was due to the increased rate at which viscoelastic response to deformation 

Apparent Activation Energies in Reinforced Systems (HAF-Filled SBR Rubbers)  

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