Activation energies for the thermodegradation process of an epoxy-diamine system -: Influence of the curing cycle selection

The study of the degradation of a polymer is important because it can determine the upper temperature limit, the mechanism of a solid-state process, and the life-time for this system. Since the behavior of thermosets is affected by the selection of the curing cycle, it is important to investigate the changes which take place during the thermal degradation of these materials when a change on the sequence of time and temperature is introduced during the curing reaction. In this work, the thermal degradation of two epoxy systems diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (BADGE n=0)/1, 2 diamine cyclohexane (DCH) cured through different sequences of time and temperature was studied by thermogravimetric analysis in order to determine the reaction mechanism of the degradation processes, and also to check the influence of the curing cycle on this mechanism. Values obtained using different kinetic methods were compared to the value obtained by Kissinger's method (differential method which do not require a knowledge of the n-order reaction mechanism), and to that obtained through Flynn-Wall-Ozawa method in a previous work.