Optimal Curing of Rubber Compounds with Reversion Type Cure Behavior

Abstract

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.