Rheological characterization of water-based adhesives & sealants

 
How to ensure that a sealant or an adhesive will have the right characteristics in terms of extrusion, shape, workability, initial grab and hold up? The answer lies in optimizing the rheological behavior with the right understanding of the key characteristics. The manual or mechanical applicability of thick aqueous adhesives depends on their ability to flow under stress. Consequently, a rheological approach is relevant to physically describe the flow mode of such viscoelastic materials. The objective of this paper is to identify the rheological parameters that best describe the applicability of these thick aqueous adhesives, taking the example of sealants and tile adhesives formulations. We will characterize the flow of sealants along the different application steps and propose specific approaches to predict the behavior of tiles adhesives before, during and after application. Ultimately, the aim will be to achieve correlations between viscoelastic behavior characteristics and application properties.