Technical Paper
The Utility of Crosslink Characterization in Validating Predicted Lifetime of NR Components
2000-03-06
2000-01-0751
Predicting the service lifetime of elastomeric automotive components is key to improving customer satisfaction over a 10 year / 150,000 mile desired lifetime. Achieving a good correlation between artificially aged components and those which have seen real customer usage can be a daunting task, considering the possible variations in climate, exposure and driver aggressiveness. In natural rubber (NR) components, the quantity and structure of the network crosslinks as a function of time can be used to explore some of the most basic aging mechanisms seen in the real world, as well as to validate protocols developed within the laboratory environment to accelerate the simulation of real-world mechanisms. This paper explores the findings of such a study on an NR engine mount, and examines the information learned by comparison between actual used components and test specimens subjected to accelerated degradation.