Dynamic mechanical experiments for probing process‐structure‐property relations in amine‐cured epoxies

Abstract Dynamic mechanical experiments were performed on an amine‐cured high performance epoxy system containing two types of epoxies and one amine. The system approximates a commercial resin system used widely as matrix material for graphite composites and whose main ingredients and composition are 88.5 percent of tetraglycidyl 4,4′‐diamino diphenyl methane (TGDDM) and 11.5 percent of polyglycidyl ether of Bisphenol A Novalac epoxy with varying compositions of 4,4′‐diaminodiphenyl sulfone (DDS), ranging from 19 to 40 PHR. Specifically, the effects of DDS and Novalac content as well as processing conditions including the particle size of solid components, the mixing speed, mixing temperature, and the mixing duration of the components on the dynamic mechanical properties of the epoxy polymer were investigated. A viscoelastic transition in the dynamic spectrum which was observed to be quite sensitive to the sample's T_g in conjunction with incomplete crosslinking reactions allowed for interrelating the composition and processing variables to the structure and bulk properties of this epoxy system.