STUDY OF SECONDARY MORPHOLOGICAL STRUCTURES IN POLAR RUBBERS BY RHEOLOGICAL MEANS

Z. Šušteriè, I. Dimitrievski and T. Marinoviæ
Sava d.d., R & D Institute, Škofjeloška 6, 4000 Kranj, Slovenia

ABSTRACT

Work presents an attempt to show how secondary networks in polar rubbers, formed by orientational and dispersional molecular interactions, affect the rubbers' rheological behavior. Secondary networks are weak and hence strongly susceptible to strain and temperature. Their strain and thermally induced breakdown can suitably be followed by rubbers' mechanical dynamic functions. For this purpose a model is chosen, whose result is dependence of these functions on strain and temperature during such process, also enabling determination of two energies characteristic of the network: the one for its mechanical and the other for its thermal breakdown. The model, originally devised to describe rheological properties of carbon black filled rubbers, is based on statistical mechanics of chain molecules and a few additional assumptions, yielding good agreement with experiment.