TESTING
The Impact of Innovation – and the Bottleneck of Rubber Industry Resource Constraints By Erick Sharp, president, ACE Products & Consulting
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nnovation has been moving at breakneck speed in the rubber industry over the past decade. This innovation is coming from all ends of the market. New types of synthetic polymers, recycled feedstocks and renewable feedstocks have accelerated in the raw material sector. Industry 4.0 is starting to dominate processing and fabrication sectors of the rubber industry. End applications have been transitioning to smarter and more efficient technologies, which have forced changes in desired elastomer properties. All of these innovations have a dramatic impact on testing methods and specifications. Method development Official industry standards are created, approved and modified by designated expert committees within a standards organization. Many of the standards used within North America are set by American Standard Test Method International (ASTM). Typically, these committees meet a couple times per year to review changes and additions needed. They rely on submitted data and experimentation from the industry as guidance for establishing the methods. This process can take years, depending upon the complexity of the standard and the schedule of the committee. The rapid speed of innovation has created an increase in the demand for new test method development. Since many of these innovations can’t afford long delays, test method development is determined during the development of the product. Instead of requesting that a specific international test method be performed by a laboratory, those developing test methods must review everything a product experiences in end application. From that, a laboratory can begin to establish parameters and specifications. Simulation models for durability often are used to help identify potential limits. Specialized testing With innovation comes unique applications. Often, these applications require elastomers to perform in new, dynamic ways. Existing test equipment and methods sometimes can’t create the needed correlation to the end application. This requires specialized test fixtures and methodologies to be developed specific to that product application.
8 Inside Rubber // 2019 Issue 3
Instead of asking a laboratory to test a product to a specific method, customers now are asking laboratories to find a way to simulate the product’s life cycle at an accelerated speed. This involves designing and engineering fixtures that create endapplication aging on the test specimen at a rapid rate. Once baselines are established, correlations must be drawn to actual field application. Matching these correlations will allow for product life cycle expectations to be calculated. Customized testing can become an accredited test method, even if it isn’t an international standard test method. If the laboratory creating and performing the test method is ISO / IEC
