The drying of natural rubber. Further studies of the stress relaxation behaviour of rubber in compression

PART 1, THE DRYING OF NATURAL RUBBER. This was the initial research programme to be carried out at the Institute of Polymer Technology as a result of renewed interest in the area following information feed-back from the natural rubber consumers indicating a problem of wet rubber contamination. However, due to the difficulty in producing an acceptable starting material, the work had to be terminated with the compilation of what had been achieved including the literature survey, trials to produce a representative field latex coagulum, dewatering, diffusion and absorption experiments. PART 2, FURTHER STUDIES OF THE STRESS RELAXATION BEHAVIOUR OF RUBBER IN COMPRESSION. With the development of stress relaxation measuring equipment at the Institute of Polymer Technology, highly accurate and reproducible results were obtained from the 'ideal curves'. This equipment not only provides measurement of residual force and the instantaneous modulus of a sample but also enables the whole process from 'loading' to the measurement of subsequent relaxed stresses to be made.