Direct measurement of poisson's ratio in elastomers.

Poisson's ratio has been measured in a series of filled elastomers using a novel optoelectronic system. Relative precision of this measurement was found to be approximately 0.7% at 1% strain for this family of materials. The largest contributing error source was determined to be the tolerances that could be obtained in machining the surfaces of the test specimens. As a result of these errors, only three significant for Poisson's ratio can be achived using this measurement approach. Material property tests conducted included constant strain rate and stress relaxation. Constant strain-rate results were used for general characterization, while the stress-relaxation data were employed to investigate time-dependent aspects of Poisson's ratio.