VERIFICATION OF THE CAPABILITY FOR QUANTITATIVE STRESS PREDICTION DURING EPOXY CURE

We previously developed a formalism to calculate the evolution of stre sses during the cure of crosslinking polymers. In the present study, w e characterized the chemical kinetics and cure-dependent thermophysica l properties for two epoxy systems, the diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A cured by either diethanolamine or a mixture of aromatic amines. Well -defined experiments were performed in which the cure stresses for the se two epoxies were measured as a function of time. The stresses predi cted by our formalism, using the material parameters obtained for the two systems, agreed well with the measured stresses. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.