Effect of Silica Coupling Agents on Texture Formation and Strengthening for Silica-Filled Rubber

New finite element homogenization model with nonaffine constitutive equation of rubber is developed to study the deformation behavior of silica-filled rubber under monotonic and cyclic deformation. The obtained results clarified the effect of the volume fraction of the silica coupling agent and the networklike structure connecting the silica particles on essential physical enhancement mechanisms of deformation resistance and hysteresis loss for silica-filled rubber. The finding suggests that the material characteristics of silica-filled rubber are much more controllable than those of carbon-black-filled rubber.