Tank track pads have been known to degrade rapidly under adverse conditions, especially during cross country service where the average life has been estimated to be 500 miles. Several factors have been identified as being the cause for such low service life. One of these is the 'quality of dispersion' which plays an important role in the performance of any rubber compound. In order to evaluate the effect of the quality of dispersion on the service life of rubber compounds, a controlled blending experiment was carried out with a recipe modeled on a standard track pad formula. Mechanisms of failure produced by a bad dispersion have been identified. Two interesting observations were made, one of which was the formation of voids and the other was crack propagation along flow lines which are directly relatable to processing conditions. / Master of Science