A novel aging evaluation approach for silicone rubber using a long afterglow phosphor

To address the challenge of the lack of aging characterization methods for outdoor silicone rubber used in electrical field, a non-destructive quantitative method for evaluating the aging process of silicone rubber has been proposed. A long afterglow phosphor is selected and introduced into the silicone rubber as an indicator. Samples are studied after artificially accelerated aging. The results show that the average ratio of luminescence intensity is positively correlated with the hydrophobicity of silicone rubber (an indication index of the aging process). It has been demonstrated that the method is feasible for evaluating the aging process of room temperature vulcanized (RTV) silicone rubber with a high accuracy represented by the narrow distribution of the indication index. Further, it has been proved the addition of the indicator may not degrade the performances of silicone rubber.