Tweaking Elastomer by Addition of Nano Silica in Formulation

The art of rubber formulation science always has a scope for fine-tuning with changing the parameters like base polymer grade selection, filler selection, curing system/cross link density, manufacturing methods, and many. Hence forth the filler manufacturer arrived differentiation of the filler already, this paper provides a description of rubber formulation tuning for damped vibration automotive applications. Acicular spiky spherical and hollow spherical nano silica selected as filler. With the thorough knowledge of elastomeric formulation and with doping different new selected silica grades, an optimized DOE was done. New formulation development was focused on isolation characteristics without affecting other necessary properties. The different inputs for finite element calculations was studied with the effects of doping different fillers and also studied the resultant virtual output in damping coefficients. Quad lap shear specimen was used as a standard part in which virtual and physical testing conducted. Curve fitting inputs of different formulations fed into FEA software, out-put of FEA compared with physical test results. Finally, co-relation between physical testing and digital analysis are discussed and the current work provides a framework to understand rubber formulation for vibration isolation application. In addition surface morphology and dispersion study was done using AFM and TEM.