The rheological, mechanical and aging properties of AEM/EPDM rubber blends

Rubbers are used in many applications in industries such as chemistry, automotive, agriculture, and aviation. However, different types of rubbers should be used to meet the end-user expectations in all these areas of use. In recent years, the use of the blending method has obtained both superior properties and low-cost rubbers with the synergistic effect of two different rubbers. Ethylene acrylic rubber (AEM) is resistant to heat, chemicals, and ozone, but it is not well resistant to low aniline oil and polar solvents. In addition, AEMs are much more expensive than most standard elastomers. In this study, the upside-down method was applied to preparing the series of AEM and Ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM) rubber blends in a Banbury-type internal mixer. Rubber blends were a mixture of AEM and EPDM rubber in 90/10, 20/80, 30/70, and 60/40 phr rubber ratio variation. In addition, each of the blends was tested to determine rheological and mechanical properties such as tensile strength, elongation at break, hardness and compression set as well as thermal and oil (IRM 901 and IRM 903) aging effects. The 10% addition of EPDM rubber causes an increment in the compression set, the tensile strength, and elongation at break. It was observed that the tensile strength values of A100 and A90E10 samples were larger than 8 MPa and the hardness value did not change after aging in IRM 901 oil. A100 and A90E10 samples show satisfying results to the requirements SAEJ200M3EE708 standard.