Die‐swell behavior during the short‐tube flow of rubber compounds

In this study, the flow properties and die‐swell ratios (B's) of two kinds of rubber compounds (SI was a calcium carbonate filled natural rubber compound, and SII was a carbon‐black‐filled natural rubber/butadiene–styrene rubber/cis‐1,4‐butadiene rubber compound) in a short‐tube extrusion flow were measured by means of a capillary rheometer under test conditions with a temperature of 90°C and an apparent shear rate varying from 10 to 4000 s^?1 to identify the effects of extrusion conditions on the rheological behavior of the materials and to estimate B. The shear flow roughly obeyed the power law, whereas B increased nonlinearly with increasing extrusion rate. Under the same shear rates, the viscosity of SII was higher than that of SI, whereas the values of B of SI were higher than those of SII. Furthermore, B of the rubber compounds was estimated by means of an extrudate swell equation published in a previous work. The results show that the predictions of B were close to the measured data from the experiments. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 2007