| Abstract: | The physical aging concept is generally used to explain the typical behavior of amorphous glassy materials such as amorphous polymers. It can be easily evidenced by measuring the effect of a static deformation on the dynamic mechanical properties. In this paper, an attempt is made to determine the “glassy” behavior of elastomeric EPDM chains when they are confined in the vicinity of the filler (glass beads, silicas) surface. It is demonstrated that glassy behavior and physical aging phenomena are detected even with a filled elastomer. Furthermore, the influence of the filler volume fraction, the filler nature and of filler surface treatments with silanes were studied. Finally, an original attempt is made to explain filler-rubber reinforcement by a kind of bimodal network created from linkages between a densely packed interfacial region and the outer loose matrix. |
