Effects of Thermal Aging on The Mechanical Properties of Natural Rubber

Abstract

Abstract The focus of this research was to investigate the effect of thermal degradation upon the mechanical properties of a natural rubber compound. We examined both the quasi-static and dynamic mechanical properties of a natural rubber vulcanizate which had been subjected to isothermal, anaerobic aging. The thermal aging was conducted between the temperatures of 80 °C and 120 °C for times ranging from 3 to 24 days. The effect of thermal degradation was measured using the changes in the crosslink distribution of the vulcanizates as functions of time at temperature. A master curve relationship between the crosslink distribution of the vulcanizates due to thermal degradation and the static and dynamic mechanical properties has been developed. It was found that the both the quasi-static and dynamic mechanical properties correlated with the percentage of poly and monosulfidic crosslinks, where in general higher levels of polysulfidic crosslink gave rise to the highest mechanical properties.