More than fifty percent of rubber goods are reinforced with cords, fibres, fabrics, sheets or parts of metals, plastics or other rubbers.
Among the final products:
* The best known are tyres, and V-belts for the automobile
* But there are numerous other industrial parts such as conveyor belts, bushings, high-pressure hoses, coated fabrics, silent blocks.
The substrates are:
* Steel: Bare, coated with brass or zinc, painted etc.
* Other metals as aluminium
* Textiles as polyester, polyamide, rayon, cotton, aramid, polyolefin
* Glass fabrics
* Composites
* Thermoplastics or thermosets.
All these composite parts are highly constrained and to obtain high strengths it is necessary to bond the rubber and the substrate firmly. There are several techniques:
* Use of self-adhesive rubber compounds, untreated substrates and bonding during vulcanization
* Use of treated substrates, standard rubber compounds and self-bonding during vulcanization
* Combination of the two previous techniques