ROLE OF THE DIFFUSION CONTROLLED CURING OF AN AMINO HARDENED EPOXY.

Epoxy matrices of composite materials change their physical properties when exposed to humid environments of relatively high temperature. Aging reflects in a plasticization and microcavities formation as a consequence of the sorbed water. This paper reports on studies that compared the results of liquid water sorption tests at low and high temperature for three different epoxy systems to prove that polymer behaviour and, particularly, aging depends, under the same conditions, on the network morphology. Infrared spectrometric tests have been carried out to specify the curing kinetics of all the examined systems. The more the system structure was inhomogeneous, the more considerable the damaging process has been found from the comparison of the sorption behaviour and curing characteristics