Analysing Non-Isothermal Curing Behaviour of Natural Rubber Compounds By Mathematical Modelling of Oscillating Disc Rheometer Curves

Abstract

This study investigates a novel way of analyzing the rheometer curves obtained from an Oscillating Disk Rheometer (ODR) for predicting the non-isothermal curing characteristics of a rubber compound. A mathematical function is proposed to predict the change in the observed rheometer torque as a function of the temperature to model the state of cure under transient temperature conditions. This was achieved by modeling the rheometer curve with the aid of six temperature dependant parametric constants. The proposed function was observed to accurately describe, the shape of the torque rate at any given temperature. The characteristics variation of the parametric constants too have been briefly examined.