Rheological behaviour of adhesives derived from polyurethanes

Abstract

The necessity of measurement and quality control of key parameters in industry is significantly important. Therefore, techniques not requiring sample preparation are gaining market shares, since they offer reduction in costs and decrease the amount of time needed for analysis. By the use of rotational viscometers it is possible to control viscosity parameters relevant for optimised process control reducing analysis time significantly, and furthermore ensuring the repeatability and reproducibility of the results obtained. This study has been proposed by a company, which manufactures adhesives. The aim of the company was to improve their quality control processes for measuring viscosity. With that, the company pretends to save time within the analyses, therefore save time in production processes, triggering into a reduction of the cost of the global process. To this end was necessary to acquire knowledge of adhesives; hence, different analyses have been done to know their chemical, thermal and also mechanical and physical properties. In addition to it, for this thesis it has been necessary to be able to quantify the rheological phenomena occurring in those complex flows that take part in adhesives. So, knowledge on rheological behaviour was needed for setting the right product analyses, such as temperature and flow rate. The majority of the analyses have been done in the company that has proposed the thesis; and the rest took place in Barcelona, in the Polytechnic University of Catalunya. Moreover, this study includes a theoretical part where some aspects referred to adhesives are explained, supporting the experimental work carried out.