Study on Rheological Characterization of Uncured Natural Rubber with Different Initial Moisture Contents Dried by Microwave

In this work, the rheological behavior of uncured natural rubber with different initial moisture contents dried by microwave was studied using RPA under frequency sweep and strain sweep modes. It can be seen from the results that the variation trend of viscous torque S`` versus sweep frequency kept with the trend of elastic torque S` versus sweep frequency. Moreover, the viscous torque S`` values were lower than those for elastic torque S`, a good linear relation curve was obtained by plotting elastic torque S` versus sweep frequency. The curve of storage shear modulus G` versus sweep strain presented a linear relationship, showed a linear viscoelastic behavior of uncured natural rubber with different initial moisture contents. This may be explained by the degradation of molecular chains of natural rubber and the van der waals forces between them.