Determination of the Mechanical Properties of Rubber by FT-NIR

Mechanical tests, for example, tensile and hardness tests, are usually used to evaluate the properties of rubber materials. In this work, mechanical properties of selected rubber materials, that is, natural rubber (NR), styrene butadiene rubber (SBR), nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR), and ethylene propylene dienemonomer (EPDM), were evaluated using a near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy technique. Here, NR/NBR and NR/EPDM blends were first prepared. All of the samples were then scanned using a FT-NIR spectrometer and fitted with an integration sphere working in a diffused reflectance mode. The spectra were correlated with hardness and tensile properties. Partial least square (PLS) calibration models were built from the spectra datasets with preprocessing techniques, that is, smoothing and second derivative. This indicated that reasonably accurate models, that is, with a coefficient of determination [R-2] of the validation greater than 0.9, could be achieved for the hardness and tensile properties of rubber materials. This study demonstrated that FT-NIR analysis can be applied to determine hardness and tensile values in rubbers and rubber blends effectively.