The vulcanization bonding process is used in a growing number of industrial applications where rubber-to-metal bonded assemblies are needed. The complexity of this process lies in the fact that the vulcanization of the rubber and curing of an adhesive previously coated on the metallic surface have to take place simultaneously during a single molding step.
In the present work, we present an instrumented molding device allowing the production of adhesion peeling test samples under well controlled curing temperature cycles. Tests performed on a model natural rubber compound with a commercial adhesive system show that, for high cure temperatures, the quality of the rubber-to-metal bonding obtained is significantly reduced. The decrease of the peeling energy appears to be inversely proportional to the reversion undergone by the rubber during cure. Such a result points out the necessity of taking into account this phenomenon for optimization of the vulcanization bonding process.