Mechanical properties of carbon black filled hydrogenated acrylonitrile butadiene rubber for packer compounds

Hydrogenated acrylonitrile butadiene rubber (HNBR) was chosen to develop peroxide cured and carbon black N220 (CB) reinforced high modulus vulcanizates with possible applications in packers for oil exploration. HNBR vulcanizates are investigated by Rubber Processing Analyzer RPA 2000 and stress-strain tests conducted both in elongation and compression mode. All the mechanicals properties were tested both at room temperature (RT) and 150 °C in order to reflect application of packers. The results show that the modulus of CB filled HNBR vulcanizates increases with the increase of CB loadings in shear, tensile and compression mode. The physical interactions resulting from CB reinforcements show a stronger temperature-dependence than chemical crosslinks formed by curing agent. So the addition of reinforcing carbon black will have limited benefit for producing packer compounds with high enough modulus at high temperature, but more amount of curing agent will contribute to a stable high enough modulus. It is testified the filler-filler interaction is more temperature dependent than filler-rubber interaction and more chemical crosslinks increase the filler-rubber bonding and slightly decrease the filler-filler interaction, which is confirmed by the reinforcement factors. Compression tests show a strong dependence on the geometry of the samples and the compressive Payne Effect is examined by the multiple compression cycles. It gets stronger as the CB loading is increased.