Polymer Engineering and Science, Vol.43, No.1, 14-25, 2003
An alternative model for predicting the cure kinetics of a high temperature cure epoxy adhesive
The purpose of this work was to develop a cure kinetics model for a commercially available high temperature cure epoxy adhesive commonly used in the aerospace industry. While there are several phenomenological cure kinetic models commonly used in the literature for describing the rate of conversion of thermosetting epoxy adhesives as a function of degree of conversion, none of these models adequately depicts the adhesive used in this work over the entire range of conversion. Hence, by curve fitting empirical data collected using differential scanning calorimetry and refinement of existing models, an alternative model is proposed. The form of the present model suggests that chemical curing is the result of the combination of two autocatalytic reactions. The model is able to account for both the chemically controlled and diffusion controlled regimes of the cure. This paper also describes a novel iterative approach for predicting kinetics parameters as a function of isothermal cure temperature. Excellent agreement between experimental measurements and model predictions has been demonstrated over the entire range of conversion.