FATIGUE-RESISTANT SILICONE ELASTOMER FORMULATIONS

Fatigue-resistant elastomers have been prepared using various metal ox ides as fillers in poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS)-based elastomers. The judicious choice of inorganic fillers produced elastomers that were s table under cyclic testing at elevated temperatures. These experiments were carried out using the Mechanical Energy Resolver, an instrument modified to reduce testing time from approximately 6 weeks to 60 h. Fo ur elastomers showed stable storage moduli, were creep resistant, and showed less than 1% weight loss after 60 h. By comparison, a formulati on prepared with alumina as the filler showed high rates of creep and greater than 10% weight loss. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.