Rubber in Automotive

Approximately 500 - 600 application in the automobile involve the use of elastomer. These uses vary from model to model and from year to year. Automotive people are continully faced with material, design, process and cost decision in choosing elastomers to established performance goal. These goals can include durability, economy and meeting government regulation depending on the application.

Automotive standard for elastomer.
A complete rubber component standard is necessary for the following reasons

1. To ensure selection of material that meet requirement.
2. To prevent change in production material without the users's knowledge.
3. To correlate design requirement  with material properties.
4. To make certain that the material are commercially available.
5. To maintain uniform quality in production shipments.

The requirements of a rubber component specification are as follow:

1. Material requirement such as color , type of materials finished part quality.
2. Performance requirement such as density, tensile , elongation and tear.
3. Description of test methods including SAE, ASTM, and other laboratory procedure.
4. Construction requirement for composite materialsuch as hoses head gaskets .
5. Dimensional requirement , any information on tolerance or thickness of material referred to in the standard is required.
6. Sampling instruction , including sample size and number of sample to be submited.
7. Packaging instruction, to ensure clean, distortion-free part after shipment and storage.