EVALUATION OF RHEOLOGICAL PROPERTIES OF RUBBERCOMPOUNDS BASED ON NR BY DETERMINATION OF NR LIPID CONTENTS OBTAINED FROM ATTENUATED TOTAL REFLECTION FOURIER TRANSFORM INFRARED SPECTRA

摘要

This work was done in three stages. In step 1, the lipid content of different natural rubbers (NRs) was evaluated by two methods, extraction and attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy, and the obtained results were successfully correlated. In the second step, the correlations between scorch time (Ts-2) and optimum cure time (T'c(90)) of rubber compounds based on natural rubber (NR) and the lipid contents of different types of NR (obtained by two methods) were investigated. The suitable linear behaviors were observed. In the third step, because ATR-FTIRspectroscopy is a fast, simple, and nondestructive technique for characterizing NR, the correlations that were obtained by this method were considered to predict the rheological properties of two case studies. The amounts of Ts-2 and T'c(90) were estimated by errors of about 20% and 15%, respectively. This new approach is a nondestructive and rapid method for predicting the cure characteristics of the defined NR-based rubber compounds by analyzing small amounts of the species.