Mechanical characteristics of swollen elastomers under cyclic loading

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThe environmental and economic concerns have raised the popularity of biodiesel as a potential replacement for conventional fuel. However, the incompatibility of engineering rubber components with biodiesel affects significantly the performance of the components. Majority of the compatibility studies focus on evaluating the degradation of mechanical properties of the rubbers due to contamination of different types of biodiesel. Nevertheless, the resulting mechanical responses of swollen rubbers, in particularly under cyclic and fatigue loading conditions, are rarely investigated. In engineering applications where elastomeric components are concurrently subjected to fluctuating mechanical loading and contamination of hostile liquids such as biodiesel, it is crucial to investigate the mechanical responses of these components for durability analysis. In this view, the present study aims to investigate the effect of swelling, due to biodiesel diffusion in the elastomers, on the macroscopic mechanical responses under cyclic loading conditions. Simple stress-free immersion tests are conducted on elastomers and the resulting mechanical responses are evaluated. The focus of the present work is on the effect of biodiesel diffusion on the inelastic responses classically observed in elastomers under cyclic loading conditions, i.e. stress-softening, hysteresis and stress relaxation. The results show that the above inelastic responses decrease significantly when the swelling level increases.

Structure–property relationships of fatty acid swollen, crosslinked natural rubber shape memory polymers

“…Furthermore, at high wt% acid, failure is observed with the high load. This is attributed to a reduction in the density of load‐bearing chains with increased swelling and the loss of energy dissipation mechanisms in oil swollen networks leading to network failure …”

Modeling the Mullins effect in elastomers swollen by palm biodiesel

“…According to Chai et al (2013a), the NBR swollen up to 5% and 7% are far from equilibrium swelling. Thus, solvent distribution across cross-sections of the specimen is not homogeneous.…”

“…In contrast to dry rubbers, only few studies on the observation and modeling of Mullins effect in swollen rubbers or gels are available in the literature (Webber, Creton, Brown, & Gong, 2007;Lin, Fan, Marcellan, Hourdet, & Creton, 2010;Andriyana, Chai, Verron, & Johan, 2012;Chai, Andriyana, Verron, & Johan, 2013a;Chai, Andriyana, Verron, & Johan, 2013b). Hence, the objective of the present work is to characterize and to model the Mullins effect in rubber under cyclic loading taking into consideration the swelling.…”

Fatigue of swollen elastomers

“…Indeed, before the fatigue tests, the hardness values of dry, swollen B0 and swollen B100 rubbers were 59.5, 54.81 and 54.73 respectively. The corresponding observation could be attributed to the chain scission mechanism (Haseeb et al, 2010) and decreased viscosity due to swelling (Chai et al, 2013). After undergoing fatigue loading, further decreases in the hardness were observed: 9% in swollen B0 and 11% in swollen B100.…”