Recent progress of elastomer–silica nanocomposites toward green tires: simulation and experiment

Abstract

The concern regarding increasing oil consumption that originates from the high rolling resistance of automobiles has led to the development of green tires. The key enabling technique for preparing green tires involves the utilization of elastomer-silica nanocomposites. Elastomer-silica nanocomposites usually show low rolling resistance because of the intrinsic lubrication characteristics of siloxane and the excellent elastomer-modified silica interfacial interaction, making them ideal raw materials for a green tire. It is supposed that the comprehensive properties of rolling resistance can be further improved via continually optimizing the microstructures of elastomer-silica nanocomposites. Regulating silica dispersion, understanding the interface between elastomer and silica and building the quantitative correlation between the microstructure and the static/dynamic macro-mechanical properties are crucial in designing high-performance elastomer-silica nanocomposites. This review aims to summarize the recent progress of elastomer-silica nanocomposites from the point of view of silica dispersion, the elastomer-silica interface and the microstructure-mechanical connection, combining simulation and actual experimental findings. A short conclusion and an outlook on the current limitations and possible future research directions for constructing highperformance elastomer-silica nanocomposites for low-energy green tires are also presented.

Interplay of Grafted and Adsorbed Chains at the Polymer–Particle Interface in Tuning the Mechanical Reinforcement in Polymer Nanocomposites

“…21,25,26 However, the interplay of the grafted and adsorbed chains on mechanical properties in PGNCs has been little explored in the past. 22,27,28 For bare nanoparticle (NP)-filled polymer nanocomposites (PNCs) with attractive attractions, in addition to the hydrodynamic effect of NPs, the rubbery modulus reinforcement is controlled by the number of adsorption sites on the surface of the NPs and the additional entanglement generated between the adsorbed chains and the free chains. 19 For the modulus reinforcement of PGNCs, a simulation study found that the presence of grafted chains created additional distortions to the flow field, which caused an increase in the effective hydrodynamic radius of the GNPs.…”

Simulating Stress–Strain Behavior by Using Individual Chains: Uniaxial Deformation of Amorphous Cis- and Trans-1,4-Polybutadiene

“…The intent of the methodology is to obtain mechanical properties from conformational statistics in a numerical approach that can incorporate effects of specific polymer–polymer and polymer–filler interactions. Motivational examples from experiments include functionalized end-groups that provide interactions with silica fillers [ 7 , 8 ], which have been demonstrated to improve metrics that correlate with lower rolling resistance [ 9 , 10 , 11 ]. The basis of the approach developed here on chain conformation probability density enables sampling over many chain configurations that can be computed without necessarily requiring costly bulk phase molecular dynamics simulations.…”

Effect of Hydrophobic Silica Particles on Mechanical Properties of Bromobutyl Rubber (BIIR)

“…In the decades since these materials were first discovered, a family of precipitated silica has been developed. However, due to the polar surface characteristics of the polyhydroxy groups of silica, it is easy to agglomerate and difficult to disperse in a non-polar rubber system [7][8][9].…”