Differential model accounting for reversion for EPDM vulcanized with peroxides

One of the main drawbacks of EPM/EPDM rubber vulcanization by peroxides is the lack of selectivity, which leads to a number of side reactions. The reaction mechanisms at the base of peroxides crosslinking are generally known and include the formation of alkyl and allyl (in the EPDM case) macro-radicals through H-abstraction from the macromolecular chains and the combination of these macro-radicals, which macroscopically is known with the term “vulcanization”. In the paper, a simple but effective mathematical model having kinetic base, to predict the vulcanization degree of rubber vulcanized with peroxides, is presented. The approach takes contemporarily into consideration, albeit within a simplified scheme, the actual reactions occurring during peroxidic curing, namely initiation, H-abstraction, combination and addition, and supersedes the simplified approach used in practice, which assumes for peroxidic curing a single first order reaction. After a suitable re-arrangement of the first order system of differential equations obtained from the actual kinetic system adopted, a single second order non-linear differential equation is obtained and numerically solved by means of a Runge–Kutta approach. Kinetic parameters to set are evaluated by means of a standard least squares procedure where target data are represented by experimental values available, i.e. normalized rheometer curves or percentage crosslink density experimentally evaluated by means of more sophisticated procedures. In order to have an insight into the reliability of the numerical approach proposed, two cases of technical interest are investigated in detail: the first is an EPDM crosslinked with two different peroxides, whereas the second is a compound with high level of unsaturation, showing reversion at medium-high vulcanization temperature (175◦C).