An Approach to the Modeling of Physical Ageing in Rubbery Polymers

The oxidation reactions responsible for physical ageing are thermally activated processes and yield cross-linking similar to the vulcanization process and chain-scission reactions. Chain scission, is responsible for the relaxation behaviour under constant stretch, whereas cross-linking is responsible for hardening of the material. The decrease in the stretch at break upon cross-linking motivates the so called network alteration proposed in this contribution. (© 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)