Modeling and simulation of curing kinetics for the cardanol-based vinyl ester resin by means of non-isothermal DSC measurements

The cure kinetics of vinyl ester-styrene system was studied by non-isothermal differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) technique at four different heating rates. The kinetic parameters of the curing process were determined by isoconversional method for the kinetic analysis of the data obtained by the thermal treatment. Activation energy (E-a = 56.63 kJ mol(-1)) was evaluated for the cure process and a two-parameter (m, n) autocatalytic model was found to be the most adequate to describe the cure kinetics of the studied cardanol-based vinyl ester resin. Non-isothermal DSC curves, as obtained by using the experimental data, show good agreement with the DSC curves obtained by theoretically calculated data. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.