Abstract:

The effects of DDS curing agent ratio on the curing kinetic and viscosity of a DDS/bisphnol-A epoxy resin system are experimentally studied by DSC analysis and viscosity measurements. The results show that the DDS ratio has little effect on rheological behavior of resin system in a certain range. An engineering viscosity model is succefully developed to predict resin rheological behaviors of the resin system based on the viscosity measurement results and mechanisms of the curing reaction. The established model can be used to predict the processing windows of different viscosity requirements, which is critical for the simulation and optimization of composite manufacturing processes.

Key words: bisphnol-A epoxy resin, reaction curing agent, viscosity model, processing windows