TY - JOUR A1 - Hoster, B. A1 - Jaunich, Matthias A1 - Stark, Wolfgang T1 - Monitoring of the vulcanisation process by ultrasound during injection moulding JF - The e-journal of nondestructive testing & ultrasonics N2 - Today rubber is due to its unique property profile one of the most important materials for the production of bearings, dampers or also tires and tubes. In the production of rubber goods a chemical cross-linking reaction (vulcanisation) generates the final material properties. This process takes place during the shape giving of the rubber compound in the mould and can proceed for several minutes. The cross-linking process is influenced by the mixture of the basic polymer, the cross-linking agent, the influence of catalysts and inhibitors and especially the processing conditions. The quality of every ingredient, the reproducibility of the mixing ratio, the homogeneity of the mixture and the accurateness in temperature control can have a direct influence on the cross linking reaction. To control the quality of a rubber compound and verify the processing conditions in industry moving die rheometers, named curemeter, are involved in the production process. Starting from our experience in cure monitoring of thermosetting materials by measuring ultrasound velocity in the mould we extended the measuring principle to rubber vulcanisation monitoring. After first investigations using a compression mould we dealt here with on-line monitoring of vulcanisation in an injection moulding process which is one of the most used techniques in rubber industry. KW - Ultrasonic KW - Sound velocity KW - Vulcanisation KW - On-line monitoring KW - Injection moulding PY - 2009 UR - https://www.ndt.net/search/docs.php3?id=8042 SN - 1435-4934 VL - 14 IS - 9 SP - 1 EP - 9 PB - NDT.net CY - Kirchwald AN - OPUS4-19858 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Jaunich, Matthias A1 - Stark, Wolfgang A1 - Hoster, B. T1 - Monitoring the vulcanization of elastomers: Comparison of curemeter and ultrasonic online control JF - Polymer testing N2 - The vulcanization of elastomeric materials has a high impact on the properties of the final product. Therefore, it is important to monitor and control this crosslinking process. A common technique to attain the necessary curing time is the use of a curemeter in accordance with ISO 6502 in order to determine the time for full cure of a sample with a standardized geometry. Based on this result and a lot of practical experience, the required curing time for a given product geometry is estimated. Within the scope of this work, a new analysis technique will be compared with the standard procedure. The ultrasonic online control employs ultrasound waves to measure the changes in material properties caused by vulcanization. For this study, a natural rubber compound with a conventional curing system was investigated by both techniques. It was found that the results of the ultrasonic technique show good agreement with the results of the curemeter. KW - Cure process KW - Ultrasound KW - Curemeter KW - Elastomer KW - Vulcanization KW - Online control PY - 2009 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polymertesting.2008.11.005 SN - 0142-9418 VL - 28 IS - 1 SP - 84 EP - 88 PB - Elsevier Science CY - Amsterdam [u.a.] AN - OPUS4-18674 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -