Determination of silica content and its dispersion in NR‐PBR‐RR ternary blends/ SiO2 nanocomposites by digital image analysis of SEM images

To study the silica content and its dispersion behavior in natural rubber (NR)‐polybutadiene rubber (PBR)‐reclaim rubber (RR)/ SiO2 nanocomposites, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images was used by image processing technique. A suitable algorithm was proposed to determine the silica percentage of the nanocomposites. Based on proposed algorithm, image analysis was carried out to present quantitative and qualitative measure of size distribution of silica (filler) agglomerates in the polymer nanocomposites. On the basis of stack based region detection algorithm, various sizes of silica particles was detected and 2D image was reconstructed through 10 different colors for 10 types of regions. This article also dealt with various aspects of the polymers such as filler‐filler interaction, agglomerate detection, and dispersion of filler agglomerates through image analysis of their SEM micrographs. POLYM. COMPOS., 38:2080–2089, 2017. © 2015 Society of Plastics Engineers