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The art of rubber formulation science always has a scope for fine-tuning with changing the parameters like base polymer grade selection, filler selection, curing system/cross link density, manufacturing methods, and many. Hence forth the filler manufacturer arrived differentiation of the filler already, this paper provides a description of rubber formulation tuning for damped vibration automotive applications. Acicular spiky spherical and hollow spherical nano silica selected as filler. With the thorough knowledge of elastomeric formulation and with doping different new selected silica grades, an optimized DOE was done. New formulation development was focused on isolation characteristics without affecting other necessary properties. The different inputs for finite element calculations was studied with the effects of doping different fillers and also studied the resultant virtual output in damping coefficients.

Light weighting has been one of major driver in automotive industry for few decades. Today when automobile industry is in the transition from internal combustion engine to electric vehicles it becomes even more dominant driver. Many high strength or advanced high strength steels are used in different parts of automotive body for down-gauging and light weighting. BH 220 steel is used in automotive skin panels for its bake hardening property. BH220 provides excellent combination of formability during stamping process and dent resistance in skin panel parts post painting and baking cycle. This material uses CED oven temperature for baking and provide bake hardening effect (BH effect/BH Index) in parts due to increase in yield strength by 35-70 MPa. Current national and international standards specify requirement on BH Index at 170°C for 20 minutes with 2% pre-strain.

Use of adhesives in automotive require in-depth material, design, manufacturing & engineering knowledge. It is also necessary to understand functional requirements. For perfect and flawless adhesive joinery, the exact quantity of adhesive, its material composition, thickness of adhesive layer, substrate preparation methods for adhesive bonding, handling and curing time of the adhesive have to be studied & optimized. This paper attempts to describe different aspects of adhesive bonding in automotive industry to include: Selection of adhesives based on application and design of the components, surface preparation of adherend, designing of adhesive joint, curing conditions of adhesives, testing and validation of adhesive joints. Emphasis was given to study & verify the performance of different adhesive joints to meet end product requirements. Samples were prepared with a variety of adhesive and adherend combinations.

With increased awareness about environmental issues, the trend of automobile industry is to use ‘Recycled’ or ‘Biodegradable’ or ‘Energy Recoverable’ material. As a part of this programme, to make the vehicle ‘Green’ in nature, many automobile OEMs have taken the initiative to make use of natural fibre composite in their vehicles. Natural fibre based composite has been successfully proven for less critical as well as for semi-structural applications in an automobile. These typical applications are insulations, headlining, carpets, door pad etc. There is a demanding task for automotive OEMs to meet 85% Recyclability and 95% Recoverability targets by year 2015. To meet the RRR (Reuse, Recycle & Recover) and the ELV (End of Life) regulatory requirements, increased use of natural fibre based composite/ biopolymers is unavoidable. Natural fibre can offer potential advantages such as weight saving and improve overall green rating of the vehicle.

Brake system has been considered as the most important safety system for a vehicle. Performance of the Brake system depends upon various factors like purity of brake fluid, material and construction of rubber hose, rubber seal performance etc. The purity of the brake fluid is one of the most vital factor and incompatibility of the rubber hose with brake fluid causes contamination of the brake fluid. This intern can cause shrinkage / swelling of master, slave cylinder rubber seals. The change in the dimensional of the rubber seals directly affects the performance of the brake system. In order to evaluate the performance of the brake system, Styrene Butadiene Rubber (SBR) and EPDM elastomers with different % of ethylene and varying ENB content were considered for brake fluid compatibility test. These rubber materials were tested in the different brands of DOT 3 brake fluid.

Large number of studies have been carried out and references are available on the use of synthetic rubber with non-carbon black fillers. Use of carbon black reinforced natural rubber is very common in automotive applications especially suspension top cups, cab mounts, suspension bushes, engine mounts etc Carbon black plays key role in the alteration of the rubber compound properties to suit the end product requirements for hysteresis, stiffness, hardness, compression set etc. This paper gives experimental details, results, and conclusions on and effect of carbon black in natural rubber compound. Carbon black reinforced natural rubber formulations were made and keeping all other ingredients of the formulation constant including type of carbon black and by varying only the amount of carbon black dosage. Since the rubber components call for different specifications based on the end product requirements, it is not possible to have common rubber formulation for all the end products.

NBR/PVC rubber blend finds application in automotive rubber components like fuel hose, breather hose, bellows, gaskets etc. Carbon black reinforced rubber blends with different proportions of NBR to PVC were prepared. All the other additives types and contents were kept same. These rubber blends were studied for mechanical properties, thermal resistance, ozone resistance, fuel ageing. Results obtained were used to suggest optimum NBR/PVC blend composition for use in automobile components.