Experimental study on rubber compounds made of reactivated EPDM for fiber reinforced elastomeric isolators

Abstract

Rubber recycling technology has been a popular issue in many research fields considering huge amount rubber waste in the environment. This paper discusses an application of reactivated ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM) to fabricate fiber reinforced elastomeric isolators (FREIs), which is considered as a low cost seismic protection device. Two types of regenerated EPDM are considered to be blended with two different virgin rubber, Vistalon 3666 and Dutral 4038. The first is used to produce a compound with the hardness around 30 Shore A, while the latter 60 Shore A. A series of experimental tests are performed including rheometer, shore A hardness, compression set and uniaxial tensile test. The results show that the compounds with reactivated EPDM type B present the most satisfactory performance, before and after ageing. This paper discusses also the method in fabricating FREIs, made of the selected recycled rubber and the glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP). The hardness test performed on the sliced FREI specimen indicates that the vulcanization temperature used in the production is roughly suitable to obtain the expected rubber properties.