| Abstract: | New polymeric materials have been prepared by the cationic copolymerization of regular soybean oil, low saturation soybean oil, i.e. LoSatSoy oil, or conjugated LoSatSoy oil with styrene and divinylbenzene, norbornadiene or dicyclopentadiene initiated by boron trifluoride diethyl etherate (BF 3·OEt 2) or related modified initiators. The effects of the stoichiometry, the type of soybean oil and the alkene comonomer on the damping behavior of the resulting polymers have been investigated. The damping properties have been quantitatively evaluated by the loss tangent maximum (tan δ) max, the temperature range ΔT for efficient damping (tan δ > 0.3), and the integrals of the linear tan δ v. temperature curves (tan δ area, TA). These bulk materials are composed primarily of soybean oil‐styrene‐divinylbenzene random copolymers with considerable variability in the backbone compositions. The good damping properties of the soybean oil polymers are presumably determined by the presence of fatty acid ester side groups directly attached to the polymer backbone and the segmental heterogeneities resulting from crosslinking. In general, crosslinking reduces the (tan δ) max and the TA values, but broadens the region of efficient damping (ΔT). Soybean oil polymeric materials with appropriate compositions and crosslink densities are capable of efficiently damping over a temperature region in excess of 110 °C and provide noise and vibration attenuation over broad temperature and frequency ranges. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
