Chapter 7 Reverse engineering: a tool for the chemical composition analysis of finished rubber products
Saikat Das Gupta, Hirak Satpathi, Tirthankar Bhandary and Rabindra Mukhopadhyay
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De Gruyter Brill
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Abstract
Rubber is a versatile material. Special characteristics like incompressibility, stretch-ability, viscoelasticity, and low-temperature flexibility make rubber a significant ma-terial for wide application. From a very simple product like a rubber band to verycomplex products like tyres, rubber finds its application successfully. Different typesof rubbers are available to suit different applications. These rubbers are categorisedinto two major groups: natural rubber and synthetic rubber. Rubber products are ba-sically a complex homogeneous mixture of a number of different ingredients. Theseingredients include rubber, filler, processing aids, oligomeric resins, antidegradants,accelerators, activators, pigments for colour products, chopped fibres, and specialchemicals [1–3]. Each ingredient has typical characteristics and provides a synergisticeffect to the rubber compound. The combination of these ingredients varies depend-ing on the application of rubber products [4–8]. Characterisation of finished rubberproducts with respect to material composition and performance parameters are criti-cal to any manufacturer. This helps the product manufacturer to gain confidenceabout their products. Understanding of material composition from finished rubberproducts is generally termed as material reverse engineering. Reverse engineering isa well-known technique in every industry; it helps industry:–understand the edge of its product or service over its competitor;–create better marketing strategy;–support its technical service.Chemical reverse engineering of rubber products is one of the most critical as well ascomplex processes. Rubber industry generally deals with two major groups of materi-als: (1) reactive material and (2) nonreactive materials. Reactive materials in a rubbercompound changes its form and chemical structure during different processing oper-ations, whereas nonreactive materials are stable materials and do not change itschemical nature. Due to this chemical change, characterisation of some of the ingre-dients in rubber product becomes difficult. This chapter will discuss some of the tool.