Research article

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The influence of the type of mechanical recycling of waste rubber particles on the tensile properties of waste/natural rubber blends has been investigated. The wastes originating from ground tyre rubber (GTR) had been treated by two distinct processes: cryo-grinding and high shear mixing (HSM). For both processes, the resulting composites show enhanced stiffness and strength for all strain rates and temperatures tested. This is attributed to both the reinforcing effect of the waste as well as the nucleation ability of the wastes on strain induced crystallization (SIC) in the natural rubber (NR) matrix. Cryo-grinding was shown to provide the finest particle size with an average diameter of 34 μm, while the HSM process was found to show an elastic modulus of aggregated GTR powder of 7 MPa at 1 Hz at room temperature. Within these characteristics, the NR/GTR blends using the HSM process show the best tensile performance under single loading, with the highest strength and highest ability to crystallize under strain. Under cyclic loading, NR/GTR blends using cryo-ground GTR particles show the best performance, which we ascribed to their ability to better distribute and accommodate the stress from one cycle to another owing to their finest size. Both explored recycling techniques provide the natural/waste rubber blends interesting properties such as mechanical reinforcement and strain-induced crystallization ability under various testing conditions.