Application of Taguchi method in determining optimum level of curing system of NBR/PVC blend

Abstract

Taguchi method is applied in this study to determine the optimum level of curing system (sulfur, MBTS, and CBS) in a NBR/PVC blend. By considering physicomechanical properties of cured NBR/PVC blend, optimum level of curing system is determined. A fixed master batch formulation of NBR/PVC is used, and the effect of curing system is studied on the physicomechanical properties of NBR/PVC blend, such as tensile strength (TS) and elongation-at-break (EB) before and after aging and also hardness and abrasion. The L9 orthogonal array that includes nine rows and four columns is applied. In this matrix, rows show the experiments and three columns show the amount of three factors (sulfur, MBTS, and CBS) and one column is left arbitrarily as an empty column. In this array, the columns are mutually orthogonal. The optimum physicomechanical properties of cured NBR/PVC blend are at 2 phr sulfur, 2 phr MBTS, and 0,5 phr CBS of curing system. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.