Research Progress on Aging of Rubber Sealing Materials

Rubber is an important material in mechanical engineering industries. Rubber sealing materials play a key role in many mechanical instruments, and aging of rubber seals may cause unpredictable failures or even huge losses. Hence, aging research of rubber sealing materials are attracting great attentions. The aging research progress of rubber sealing materials is reviewed, including aging behavior and mechanism, effects of stress and chemical media on aging, lifetime evaluation indexes and prediction, and aging analysis techniques. The existing problems in aging research of rubber sealing materials are discussed. Future research perspectives are proposed, including studies on accelerated aging methods, aging mechanism, correlation between accelerated aging and natural aging of rubber seals, and so on.