An experimental facility to measure the chemorheological response of inflated elastomeric membranes at high temperature

An experimental facility for measuring the time-dependent deformation of an inflated elastomer membrane at elevated temperatures is presented. The facility controls the temperature and inflation volume of a membrane specimen and measures the pressure and deformation field. The finite deformation field is determined by comparing the configuration of the inflated membrane to the initially flat reference configuration, determined by photogrammetry of an array of dots printed on the surface of the membrane. The facility provides an effective method to investigate the changes in mechanical properties due to scission and cross-linking in the context of a simple elastomeric structure that has a distribution of multi-axial deformation states.