CORRELATION BETWEEN DIELECTRIC AND CHEMORHEOLOGICAL PROPERTIES DURINGCURE OF EPOXY-BASED COMPOSITES

A method for the complete thermal, rheological and dielectric characte rization of an epoxy matrix for advanced composites is presented. The analysis of the dielectric response suggests that ionic resistivity da ta can be used to develop quantitative correlations with the materials properties during thermosets processing. Ionic resistivity and degree of reaction data are correlated during the cure of the studied epoxy matrix and good agreement between the model predictions and the experi mental data is observed under isothermal and non-isothermal conditions . Moreover, degree of reaction data calculated from dielectric measure ments are used in a chemorheological model for viscosity calculation, obtaining very good correlation between measured and predicted viscosi ty.