The rubber compounds used in tires are typically composed of polymers, fillers, and various chemicals. It is necessary to recognize that they are complex mixtures of organic-inorganic hybrid materials with chemical reactions such as vulcanization. In this article, an overview of the basic chemical analysis methods for tire rubber compounds was presented. In order to reveal the polymer/filler compositions, polymer composition ratios, chemical contents, and morphology of the compounds, various analytical techniques are used such as thermogravimetry, NMR, chromatography, and microscopy. It is important to use various kinds of analytical techniques to understand the rubber compounds.

The Finite Element Method (FEM) is one of the most popular numerical methods in structural analyses. This article aims to explain the most basic concept of FEM to beginners. The emphasis is on how FEM reduces the differential equations of a continuum to a system of linear equations of finite degrees of freedom. After an explanation using a simple example of one-dimensional problem, extensions to multidimensional problems are briefly described.

The method of chemical analysis must be selected according to the purpose. Otherwise, proper results cannot be obtained. When analyzing PFOA as an example, the use of pretreatment methods intended for the textiles or leather for the analysis of resin films leads to lower results. Chemical analysis is used as one of the information to demonstrate that industrial products comply with substance restrictions. The information obtained from chemical analysis is important, but there are precautions. This paper describes the results of the chemical analysis of PFOA performed as a verification test and points to precaution regarding chemical analysis.

The number of products published by the European Commission as pose a risk to environmental, which has increased approximate six-fold in the last decade. Certain substances contained in industrial products are restricted by legislation. Therefore, the manufacturers of industrial products need to be able to demonstrate that their products meet applicable substance restrictions. Restricted substances under REACH regulations and POPs regulations are often managed based on information provided by suppliers, but the concentration limits for certain PFAS restrictions are very low. Consequently, information from chemical analysis may be required to complementary the information provided by the suppliers.

In this article the author described the example of degradation-analyses about the soft materials, especially polyolefin materials. The issues of this review are following as the general topics of soft materials, the scheme of the degradation analysis, the preparation technique before the analysis, the microscopic analysis, the spectroscopic, the chromatographic, the viscoelastic and the tensile properties.