The Iranian researchers at Tarbiat Modarres University managed to promote the performance and service life of tire curing bladders used in tire industry. Tire curing bladders which are rubber bags made from butyl play the role of tire inner mold in tire curing process.
“This research was conducted with the intention of producing and enhancing the function of tire curing bladders”, Ali Samadi, one of the researchers, said in an interview with the INIC news service.
“In this study we were seeking to investigate the effect of introducing nanoclay to curing bladders compounds on prolonging bladders service life and consequently reducing tire production costs so that we could achieve the maximum performance of nanoclay in tire curing bladders by achieving the proper distribution of nanoclay in bladder compound”, he added.
After studying different types of clays and selecting Montmorillonite as the right choice, he took five kinds of its modified and one kind of non-modified forms to synthesize nanocomposites and examined the bladders and determined the optimum conditions of Montmorillonite containing rubber nanocomposites synthesis.
Afterwards, he analyzed and compared Montmorillonite distribution, physical and mechanical properties, tension and strength tests, dynamic and mechanical properties of compounds and choosing the most appropriate type of modified Montmorillonite to be used in the bladder compound according to the distribution and interaction between Montmorillonite and rubber.
"The quantity of polymer intercalated into Montmorillonite interlayers plays a more dominant role than the final space between Montmorillonite layers in increasing the efficiency of Montmorillonite in polymeric bed," Samadi said, adding, "Moreover, Modified Cloisite10A Montmorillonite has the most thermal stability in butyl rubber with bladder compound formulation compared to other applied modified Montmorillonites due to its modifying aromatic structure.”
The details of the present study are published at Journal of Applied Polymer Science, volume 116, pages 2101-2109, 2010.
Source: Iran Nan Technology Initiative Council
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