Optimisation of the Production of Foamed Rubber Goods with a Lab Scale Method

SUMMARY The development of foamed rubber articles is a very complex process which involves a large number of experiments. The target of these developments is usually the optimisation of the cell structure and surface appearance. These are the most important properties that determine the performance of the finished rubber article under service conditions. The experiments described here show that it is important to investigate the decomposition reaction of the blowing agent and the crosslinking reaction. It will be shown that these reactions interfere strongly with each other. This leads to the conclusion that it is necessary to choose the blowing agents and the crosslinking agents very carefully. This paper describes experiments with a formulation based on ethylene propylene diene rubber (EPDM) to investigate the different interactions caused by the ingredients in this formulation. These experiments were performed on a lab scale. In addition, experiments based on chloroprene rubber (CR) are described. These experiments prove the same interdependences of crosslinking and decomposition reaction. Furthermore, experiments will be described which show how the results can be transferred from the lab scale to a factory scale trial.