Elongation of rubbers

Soybean oil used for plasticizing and increasing the elongation of rubber. 

An important application of Eq. (3.39) is the evaluation of M, . Flory et al.t measured the tensile force required for 100% elongation of synthetic rubber with variable crosslinking at 25°C. The molecular weight of the un-cross-linked polymer was 225,000, its density was 0.92 g cm , and the average molecular weight of a repeat unit was 68. Use Eq. (3.39) to estimate M. for each of the following samples and compare the calculated value with that obtained from the known fraction of repeat units cross-linked ... 

Vulcanization changes the physical properties of rubbers. It increases viscosity, hardness, modulus, tensile strength, abrasion resistance, and decreases elongation at break, compression set and solubility in solvents. All those changes, except tensile strength, are proportional to the degree of cross-linking (number of crosslinks) in the rubber network. On the other hand, rubbers differ in their ease of vulcanization. Since cross-links form next to carbon-carbon double bonds. 

Coran and Patel [33] selected a series of TPEs based on different rubbers and thermoplastics. Three types of rubbers EPDM, ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA), and nitrile (NBR) were selected and the plastics include PP, PS, styrene acrylonitrile (SAN), and PA. It was shown that the ultimate mechanical properties such as stress at break, elongation, and the elastic recovery of these dynamically cured blends increased with the similarity of the rubber and plastic in respect to the critical surface tension for wetting and with the crystallinity of the plastic phase. Critical chain length of the rubber molecule, crystallinity of the hard phase (plastic), and the surface energy are a few of the parameters used in the analysis. Better results are obtained with a crystalline plastic material when the entanglement molecular length of the... 

This thermodynamic behaviour is consistent with stress-induced crystallisation of the rubber molecules on extension. Such crystallisation would account for the decrease in entropy, as the disorder of the randomly coiled molecules gave way to well-ordered crystalline regions within the specimen. X-Ray diffraction has confirmed that crystallisation does indeed take place, and that the crystallites formed have one axis in the direction of elongation of the rubber. Stressed natural rubbers do not crystallise completely, but instead consist of these crystallites embedded in a matrix of essentially amorphous rubber. Typical dimensions of crystallites in stressed rubber are of the order of 10 to 100 nm, and since the molecules of such materials are typically some 2000 nm in length, they must pass through several alternate crystalline and amorphous regions. 

NONAFFINE DEFORMATION OF ELONGATED NATURAL RUBBER 21.3.1 Brief Introduction... 

FIGURE 31.13 (a) Plot showing the stress-strain behavior of various irradiated rubbers, (b) Plot showing the variation of tensile strength and modulus of rubbers irradiated with different doses, (c) Plot showing the variation of hysteresis loss, set, and elongation at break of irradiated fluorocarbon rubbers. (From Banik, I. and Bhowmick, A.K., Radial. Phys. Chem., 54, 135, 1999. With permission.)... 

FIGURE 38.5 Elongation at break of polypropylene-maleic anhydride grafted polypropylene (PP-MA-g-PP)-rubber powder composites as a function of rubber powder content. (Reprinted from Shanmugharaj, A.M., Kim, J.K., and Ryu, S.H., Polymer Test., 24, 739, 2005. Courtesy of Elsevier, U.K.)... 

A typical stress-strain curve for a pure gum natural rubber vulcanizate (i.e., without carbon black or other fillers ) is shown in Fig. 83. The stress rises slowly up to an elongation of about 500 percent (length six times initial length), then rises rapidly to a value at break in the neighborhood of 3000 pounds per square inch based on the... 

These conclusions have been confirmed by Wood and Roth, who carried out measurements at both constant lengths and at constant elongations using natural rubber vulcanized with sulfur and an accelerator. Their results at constant elongation, to be considered later in connection with the thermodynamics of rubber elasticity at higher elongations, are summarized in Fig. 89. 

Fig. 96.—Theoretical and experimental stress-strain curves for simple elongation of gum-vulcanized rubber. (Treloar. )...

Gee, Stern, and Treloar have shown that the volume changes in rubber stretched up to elongations of 100 percent are accounted for quantitatively in this manner, thus affording strong evidence for the absence of anisotropy to an extent which might seriously vitiate the approximations introduced in the preceding paragraphs. 

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