Abstract:Maturation is one of the important steps in the processing of natural rubber(NR). The process is often accompanied by changes in the structure and components of natural rubber, resulting in changes in the properties of natural rubber. The structure and components of natural rubber change synchronously with the progress of maturation, however, the influence of which on the properties of natural rubber is not clear. In this paper, three samples of TSR 10, TSR 10CV and TSR 3CV were used to compare and analyze the effects of natural network and non-rubber components on the performance of NR. The results show that the increase of the natural network structure during maturation process has a greater contribution to the increase of Mooney viscosity and initial plasticity value, while the decrease of the content of non-rubber components has less effect. For unfilled natural rubber vulcanizates, the decomposition of non-rubber components is an important source of improved mechanical properties; while the contribution of natural network structure to effective crosslink density and mechanical properties has a synergistic effect, but the contribution is relatively limited. For carbon black filled natural rubber vulcanizates, there is no significant difference in the conventional mechanical properties of the three samples, but the overall dynamic fatigue performance of TSR 10 is the best, followed by TSR 10CV and TSR 3CV is the worst. It shows that the degradation of non-rubber components and existence of natural network structure are beneficial to improve the dynamic mechanical properties of carbon black filled natural rubber vulcanizates.