Production of environmental friendly standard rubber sheet for abrasion testing

Abstract

Standard rubber sheet for abrasion testing is widely used in rubber product testing laboratories. Abrasion testing according to ISO 4649, ASTM D5963 and DIN53516 standard need to used standard rubber sheet for calibrating the abrasive sheet. This standard rubber sheet is consumable and expensive. Therefore, this study aims to produce the standard rubber for their own use of the laboratories by referring standard reference compound No. 1 in ISO 4649:2010(E) Annex B. In ISO 4649:2010(E), the vulcanization is suggested to be done at 1502°C for 251 minutes which is quite a long period of time. In order to save energy in production, the vulcanization time was reduced to 20 minutes. The result showed that the in-house rubber sheet meet the requirements of the standard; 603 Shore A in hardness and 180-220 mg of the mass loss and the difference in a mass loss was less than 15 mg from the commercial rubber sheet. In conclusion; shorter vulcanization time did not made different in abrasion results. Moreover, this study also attempted to prepared environmental friendly standard rubber sheet which has less amount of hazardous chemicals i.e. ZnO and MBTS. In order to be ready for future trend, the amount of ZnO used was reduce to 5 phr instead of 50 phr. The accelerator like MBTS was changed to be less carcinogenic type like CBS. The results showed that the environmental friendly standard rubber sheet met the requirement of ISO 4649:2010(E) standard. Zo50 (ZnO 50 phr and vulcanization at 150°C for 20 min), ZoCc (ZnO 5 phr and vulcanization at 160°C for 10 min), and ZoCBS (CBS was used instead of MBTS and vulcanization at 160°C for 20 min) were the proper formulas for producing standard rubber sheet for abrasion testing according to ISO 4649:2010(E).