Thermomechanics of strain‐induced crystallization in natural rubber under cyclic loading

Abstract

Strain-induced crystallization in natural rubber has been widely investigated in the last decades by scattering techniques. Due to dissipative processes and structural changes in the material, deformation processes are accompanied with a significant amount of heat production/consumption. Time-resolved wide-angle X-ray diffraction (WAXD) was used to characterize the structural changes in natural rubber and the local degree of crystallinity during mechanical deformation. By the simultaneous use of an infrared camera, the scattering results could be combined with changes in the temperature of the specimen due to dissipation and crystallization resp. melting of the crystallites.