Abstract
We studied the effects of fillers on the mechanical, dynamic mechanical, and aging properties of rubber–plastic binary and ternary blends derived from acrylic rubber, fluorocarbon rubber, and multifunctional acrylates. The addition of fillers, such as carbon black and silica, changed the nature of the stress–deformation behavior with a higher stress level for a given strain. The tensile and tear strengths increased with the addition of the fillers and with loading, but the elongation at break decreased, and the tension set remained unaffected. The aging properties of carbon‐black‐filled blends were better because of the thermal antioxidant nature of carbon black. The swelling resistance of the binary and the ternary blends in methyl ethyl ketone increased with the incorporation of fillers. From dynamic mechanical thermal analysis, we concluded that the filler altered the height and half‐width of the damping peak at the glass‐transition temperatures. There was little change in the loss tangent values at higher temperatures. A higher loading of the filler increased the storage modulus at all of the temperatures measured. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 90: 278–286, 2003