Unmasking Rubber Hardness
Posted on Dec 09, 2025 Tags: BlogA technical article entitled ‘Unmasking Rubber Hardness’ has been written by Gary Crutchley of Smithers.
The article argues that rubber compounds as engineering materials are just as important as metals. Cured hardness is almost always included in the rubber specifications. Hardness is valued because it’s relatively straightforward to measure, fast to implement, and commonly used as a quality control parameter. Hardness correlates with a rubber compound’s modulus, which is influenced by how the compound is formulated, processed and cured.
However, the author recommends a tolerance of no more than +/-3 hardness points is applied to any rubber compound destined for a critical engineering application.
We hope this technical article is of interest to UKGSA members.
