Stress‐strain and birefringence‐strain experiments, on polybutadiene and poly(methyl‐3,3,3, trifluoropropyl siloxane) elastomeric networks of various degrees of crosslinking have been carried out in order to evaluate the recent molecular theory of rubber elasticity of Erman and Flory, which is based on the idea of constraints imposed by entangled network chains on crosslink fluctuations. Previously published results on polyoxypylene and poly(dimethylsiloxane) networks have also been analyzed. In general, the theory describes the elastic behavior of all these systems satisfactorily. Stress‐strain and birefringence data can be interpreted using the same set of parameters. The most important theoretical parameter κ, which is a measure of the severity of constraints, varies with the elastic modulus as predicted by theory. However, the relationship is not a universal one, as was originally suggested.
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