Effective properties of carbon black filled natural rubber: Experiments and modeling

Anti-vibrating parts in automotives are often made of natural rubber reinforced by carbon black. This reinforcement, which comes from the filler–filler and filler–rubber interactions, leads to an increase of the elastic modulus, the tensile strength and the hysteresis. The aim of this work is to develop a model within a generalized self-consistent scheme for filled rubber to predict the elastic moduli. A morphological pattern, which takes into account the occluded rubber, the bound rubber and a percolating network, is proposed and the effective elastic properties are compared with experimental results obtained in both uniaxial and oedometric compression. The filler volume fraction varies in-between 0% and 18% and the influence of the specific surface of the filler is investigated, by using N330 and N650 carbon blacks.