Study of Rubber Flow Behavior Inside Mold 2000-01-0680

The flow behavior of rubber compounds inside a mold is very complicated including various phenomena such as heat transfer from the mold, wall slip and swell at the divergent cavity. A slit rheometer which can measure the flow behavior inside a mold during curing was developed. The rheometer has a window which enables the observation of the flow behavior directly under 50 MPa. The pressure loss gradient along the flow direction and shear viscosity were found to be independent on the degree of cure but wall slip was observed. The wall slip phenomena could not be explained by slip analysis, because plug flow occurred due to little effects of the poiseuille flow. The pressure behavior inside the slit could be well predicted by using the equation obtained by assuming stress relaxation of visoelastic fluid occurs without share along the wall. The stress relaxation phenomena were predicted by taking into account the short and log relaxation time.