Study of Curing Kinetics of an Epoxy-Amine Adhesive System Using a Calorimetric Analysis Approach

Abstract

Various dynamic curing experiments for an epoxy-amine adhesive system were conducted using a differential scanning calorimetry. The obtained data were corrected using a proposed baseline method, and fitted to a generalized autocatalytic model of chemical reaction to determine the model parameters. It was shown that with classical fourth-order Runge-Kutta numerical algorithm, the kinetic model as derived from the dynamic experiments could be used to reliably simulate an industrial curing process, which may include nonisothermal and quasi-isothermal curing steps. In addition, various quasi-isothermal curing experiments were performed; the heat flows of cure were measured, and numerically compared with relevant model calculations.

Keywords:

• Curing kinetics
• Degree of curing
• Differential scanning calorimetry
• Epoxy-amine adhesive system
• Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy