Investigation of the relationship of the glass‐transition temperature and the polymer structure by fuzzy set theory

Fuzzy set theory can be used to study the relationship between the glass‐transition temperature (T_g) and structure of polymers. We used the method to map this relationship and obtained T_g's for 241 polymers with a standard deviation of 20 K (the confidence bound was 90%). We also used the method to predict T_g's for 15 polymers with a standard deviation of 67 K (the confidence bound was 90%). This study demonstrates that fuzzy set theory can be effectively used for determining the quantitative structure–property relationship of polymers. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 40: 454–459, 2002; DOI 10.1002/polb.10105