Optimal Curing of Rubber Compounds with Reversion Type Cure Behavior

Abstract

A systematic procedure is presented for the optimal curing of rubber compounds showing reversion type cure behavior. First, a cure kinetic model is proposed that can explain the reversion and the induction period commonly found in the vulcanization of rubber compounds. The state of cure behavior is analyzed as a function of cure temperature and time on the basis of the derived kinetic model. Then, the problem of determining optimal cure temperature profile for a rubber slab in a simple cure press is addressed and formulated into a constrained dynamic optimization problem. Finally, numerical algorithms and simulation results are presented to demonstrate the proposed cure optimization procedure.

Influence of vulcanization temperature on the cure kinetics and on the microstructural properties in natural rubber/styrene-butadiene rubber blends prepared by solution mixing

“…As mentioned, to analyze the reaction processes during vulcanization, the kinetic model proposed by Han et al [16] was used. Under this frame, the different first order reactions can be described as follows:…”

“…In this work we have analyzed the state of cure of NR/SBR blends prepared by solution mixing by a kinetic model proposed by Han et al [16]. This model is based on the assumption that, during the induction period, no crosslinks reaction takes place.…”

Review of the Reclaiming of Rubber Waste and Recent Work on the Recycling of Ethylene–propylene–diene Rubber Waste

“…93,101 In addition to these techniques and processes, and methods for characterizing and testing of vulcanized rubber which can also be applied to revulcanized scrap rubber, [88][89][90] kinetics of chemical revulcanization of devulcanized scrap rubber can be measured too. 80,81 Moreover, the modern analytical techniques mentioned above will be instrumental in characterizing recycled/devulcanized rubber waste for efficient reuse with virgin rubber in blends and subsequent revulcanization of the virgin/devulcanized rubbers for industrial applications. The author and co-workers 64,82,87 utilized some of these techniques and procedures to successfully devulcanize some EPDM scrap rubber.…”

Evaluation of injection‐molding simulation tools to model the cure kinetics of rubbers

“…Although mechanistic kinetics models have been developed and described in the literature, 42,43,[46][47][48][49] the use of phenomenological or empirical models is more common, as is the case with both simulation tools.…”