Three Dimensional Finite Element Program for Determination of Cure Level in Thick Rubber Part

摘要

The mechanical properties and service performances of the rubber products are greatly affected by the state of cure or cure level of rubbers, especially in large rubber parts. Thus, it is very important to accurately determine the cure level evolution during the curing process. A computer program "RACE-CURE" written in standard FORTRAN code has been developed by our research team for the analysis of curing process of large rubber parts. The program was developed based on the incremental finite element formulation for three dimensional nonlinear transient heat transfer analysis coupled with cure kinetics. RACE-CURE was tested for a curing problem of a large rubber block and results are compared with those obtained from another two programs: ANSYS Polyflow v. 14 and CFEM, a MATLABO FEM program with capability to add curing kinetics, independently developed at our research group.