Curing kinetics study of an epoxy resin system for T800 carbon fiber filament wound composites by dynamic and isothermal DSC

Curing kinetics of DGEAC/DDM/DETDA/DGEB epoxy resin system was studied using dynamic and isothermal differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) for the preparation of T800 carbon fiber filament wound composites. In dynamic experiment, four kinds of epoxy resin systems were studied. Curing characteristics, such as curing range and curing temperatures of the epoxy resin system with mixed hardeners (DGEAC/DDM/DETDA), were found lying within those of the two epoxy resin systems with a single hardener (DGEAC/DDM, DGEAC/DETDA). The addition of reactive diluter (DGEB) caused increase in curing range and exothermic heat. In addition, the activation energies calculated by the isoconversional method of all four resin systems decreased to the minimum value in the early stage due to the autocatalytic role of hydroxyl groups in the curing reaction and then increased due to the increased viscosity and crosslink of epoxy systems. The addition of reactive diluter led to the decrease in activation energies on the initial stage (conversion = 0.1–0.3). In isothermal experiment, a series of isothermal DSC runs provided information about the curing kinetics of the DGEAC/DDM/DETDA/DGEB system over a wide temperature range. The results showed that the isothermal kinetic reaction of the epoxy resin followed an autocatalytic kinetic mechanism. The autocatalytic kinetic expression chosen in this work was suitable to analyze the curing kinetics of this system. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2008