Visco-elastic-plastic properties of natural rubber filled with carbon black and layered clay nanoparticles. Experiment and simulation

Garishin et al experiment and simulate the visco-elastic-plastic properties of natural rubber filled with carbon black and layered clay nanoparticles. Carbon black and silica (Si02) are the most common used reinforcing agents in natural and synthetic rubbers. The incorporation of these fillers into elastomers significantly improve their mechanical characteristics, especially the strength and stress-strain behavior of the material. These effects have been extensively examined, yet further progress in this area requires a continuous search for new unconventional fillers. One promising direction is the use of clay minerals. This allows to vary the shape and size of the filler particles in a natural way depending on the task and according to the peculiar structure of these particles (dispersion of montmorillonite, palygorskite and shungite clays produces ultra-thin plates, needles and globules, respectively). In contrast to conventional composites with micron-sized fillers, nanostructured materials have a number of characteristic features.