A NOTE ON ESTIMATING MASTERCURVES

There are several quantities in rheology which show a scaling behavior. One well known example is the time-temperature superposition principle of material functions characterizing the linear viscoelastic properties of polymer melts. We propose a mathematical shift procedure for the calculation of mastercurves and the corresponding scaling factors from experimental data which show such a scaling behavior. In order to demonstrate the applicability of the shift procedure mastercurves and scaling factors are determined for material functions of several polystyrene melts and for the specific viscosity of polyisobutylene in cyclohexane.