Thermomechanical analysis of Natural Rubber behaviour stressed at room temperature.

Owing to their high molecular mobility, stressed rubber chains can easily change their conformations and get orientated. This phenomena leads to so high reversible draw ratio that this behaviour is called rubber elasticity [1-3]. The analogy with ideal gases leads to an internal energy independent of elongation, the stress being attributed to a so-called configuration entropy. However, this analysis cannot take thermal expansion into account and moreover prohibits predicting standard thermo-elastic effect noticed at small elongations and the thermoelastic inversion effects [4]. This paper aims at : observing and quantifying dissipative and coupling effects associated with deformation energy, generated when Natural Rubber is stretched