In the present work, a comparative study of the mechanical behavior of two series of elastomeric composites, based on carboxylated styrene butadiene rubber (X-SBR) and reinforced with rice bran carbon (RBC) and graphite, is reported. Hybrid composites of X-SBR filled with RBC-graphite were also investigated in terms of the cure characteristics, hardness, tensile properties, abrasion resistance, and swelling. It was observed that the cure times decreased with the incorporation of a carbon filler whereas the torque difference, tensile strength, tensile modulus, hardness, and swelling resistance increased compared to the neat X-SBR revealing a favorable characteristic of crosslinking. Dynamic rheological analysis showed that the G' values of the composites, upon the addition of RBC-graphite, were changed to some extent. This demonstrates that the presence of a strongly developed network of fillers will ensure a reinforcing characteristic in a polymer matrix.

The characteristics of all polymer composites containing carbon materials are determined by four factors: component properties, composition, structure and interfacial interactions. The most important filler characteristics are particle size, size distribution, specific surface area and particle shape. As a consequence, in this paper we discuss the aspects of the mechanical, electrical and thermal properties of composites with different fillers of carbon black, carbon nanotube (CNT), graphene and graphite and focus on the relationship between factors and properties, as mentioned above. Accordingly, we fabricate rubber composites that contain various carbon materials in carbon black-based and silica based-SBR matrixes with dual phase fillers and use scanning electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, a rhometer, an Instron tensile machine, and a thermal conductivity analyzer to evaluate composites' mechanical, fatigue, thermal, and electronic properties. In mechanical properties, hardness and 300%-modulus of graphene-composite are sharply increased in all cases due to the larger specific surface. Also, it has been found that the thermal conductivity of the CNT-composite is higher than that of any of the other composites and that the composite with graphene has the best electrical properties.

We investigated the effect of diameter and content of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on the physical properties of styrenebutadiene rubber (SBR)/CNTs nanocomposites. CNTs-reinforced SBR nanocomposites were prepared by the melt mixing process. CNTs with different diameters were synthesized by the chemical vapor deposition method (CVD). In this work, the mechanical property and other physical properties of SBR/CNTS nanocomposites were discussed as a function of the content and diameter of CNTs.