Abstract
The dynamic mechanical properties of silica filled ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) rubber have been studied at room temperature (25°C) at different frequencies (3.5 to 110 Hz) and varying dynamic strain amplitudes (0.07 to 5%). From the dynamic analysis it was found that the trend of variation of in-phase modulus, out-of-phase modulus, and tan δ with dynamic strain for lightly filled EVA vulcanizates is similar to that of the gum EVA vulcanizate. The changes in low strain dynamic properties can be ascribed to the mobility of amorphous chains. For highly filled vulcanizates, the nature of the variation of dynamic mechanical properties follows the pattern of filled conventional rub ber systems. For the systems with intermediate filler loading, the characteris tics follow a transition between those exhibited by the gum and the highly filled systems. The increase of high and low strain moduli with volume fraction of filler could be partly due to the hydrodynamic effect of filler dispersed in the rubber matrix and partly due to the enhanced adsorptive interaction between silica and EVA rubber.
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