A Method of Estimating Kinetic Parameters of Thermoset Cures: Application to a Dicyanate Ester Resin

International audienceIn this work, temperature modulated DSC is used to measure the heat flow evolved during the cure reaction of a dicyanate ester resin. This technique enables the heat capacity contribution to be separated from the heat source term (from the kinetic behavior) in nonisothermal conditions. At any given moment, therefore, the true reaction rate can be calculated without any assumptions about the shape of the baseline of the thermogram. Result-ing accurate data are used for the characterization of cure kinetics. The isoconversional analysis shows that the apparent activation energy varies with conversion degree, so that a Kamal & Sourour kinetic model is proposed. Its kinetic parameters are obtained by an inverse method, and such a model is successfully used to simulate nonisothermal, isothermal and multistep cure experiments