Modeling of Shear Rheological Behavior of Uncured Rubber Melt

Abstract

To describe uncured rubber melt flow, a modified Phan–Thien–Tanner (PTT) model was proposed to characterize the rheological behavior and a viscoelastic one-dimensional flow theory was established in terms of incompressible fluid. The corresponding numerical method was constructed to determine the solution. Rotational rheological experiments were conducted to validate the proposed model. The influence of the parameters in the constitutive model was investigated by comparing the calculated and experimental viscosity to determine the most suitable parameters. The uncured rubber viscosity was 3–4 orders larger than that of plastic and did not have a visible Newtonian region. Compared with the Cross-Williams-Landel-Ferry (Cross-WLF) and original PTT models, the modified PTT model can describe the rheological characteristics in the entire shear-rate region if the parameters are set correctly.

Keywords

• rubber constitutive model
• numerical simulation
• viscoelastic
• viscous
• finite-difference method