Modeling and experimental investigation of the effect of silicon carbide (SiC) nanoparticles on the mechanical and microstructural properties of thermoplastic elastomer based on PP/SBR

Hajibeigi, Mohsen; Rahi, Abbas; Nakhaei, Mohammad Reza; Naderi, Ghasem

doi:10.22068/jstc.2026.2089204.1956

Modeling and experimental investigation of the effect of silicon carbide (SiC) nanoparticles on the mechanical and microstructural properties of thermoplastic elastomer based on PP/SBR

Articles in Press

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Mohsen Hajibeigi ¹

Abbas Rahi ¹

Mohammad Reza Nakhaei ¹

Ghasem Naderi ²

¹ Shahid Beheshti Univ.

² Department of Processing, Iran Polymer and Petrochemical Institute, Tehran, Iran

10.22068/jstc.2026.2089204.1956

Abstract

In this paper, the effect of silicon carbide (SiC) nanoparticles on mechanical properties of thermoplastic elastomer based on polypropylene (PP) and styrene–butadiene rubber (SBR) using the response surface methodology (RSM) was investigated. Internal mixer with melt blending method was used to produce all compounds. Central composite design (CCD) in RSM as a one of the best design of experiments methods was used to quantify the effect of different amounts of SBR and SiC nanoparticles as input variables. Five levels were selected for the range of the variables as follows: SBR (5-25 wt%), and SiC (0-6 wt%). Prediction models were used to compute the desirability functions. The mechanical properties of selected compounds along with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images of their microstructure were analyzed comparatively. According to attained results, it was found that the SiC content had the main role in mechanical properties and morphology of the nanocomposite. Also, optimal contents of variables were computed to be 17.5 and 0.9 wt% for SBR and SiC nanoparticles, respectively. Moreover, according to dynamical, mechanical and thermal analysis (DMTA) results, the R15N3 compound, has the highest damping ratio between all compounds in the temperature range of -15 to 30 ºC (i.e., room temperature) and the R25N3 compound is in second order after that.

Keywords

PP/SBR/SiC nanocomposite

RSM method

CCD approach

Mechanical properties optimization

DMTA analysis

Subjects