Cure kinetics and rheology characterization of soy-based epoxy resin system

A novel soy-based epoxy resin system was synthesized by the process of transesterification and epoxidation of regular soy bean oil, which has the potential to be widely usable in various composite manufacturing processes. Cure kinetics and rheology are two chemical properties commonly required in process modeling. In this work, the cure kinetics and rheology of the soy-based resin system were measured by means of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and viscometer. DSC was used to measure the heat flow of dynamic and isothermal curing processes. The cure kinetics models of the different formulations were thus developed. A Brookfield viscometer was used to measure the change in viscosity under isothermal conditions. A novel neural network-based model was developed to improve modeling accuracy. The models developed for cure kinetics and rheology for soy-based epoxy resin system can be readily applied to composite processing. (c) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.