Chemorheology and Curing Kinetics of a New RTM Benzoxazine Resin

The chemorheology and curing kinetics of a new high performance resin transfer molding benzoxazine resin was investigated. A chemorheological model based on a modified Arrhenius equation that describes the resin viscosity as a function of temperature and time was proposed. The model, which agreed well with the experimental data, can provide theoretical support for the mold-filling stage in the resin transfer molding process. The average activation energies of the polymerization reaction were obtained by means of gelation times at different temperatures based on the Arrhenius equation and from dynamic differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) results based on the Kissinger and Ozawa methods; the values were 96.0,84.0 and 87.8 KJ/mol, respectively. A plot of activation energy vs. conversion in the curing process was obtained using the Flynn-Wall-Ozawa model. The reaction orders were estimated from isothermal DSC based on a modified Kamal kinetics model which can describe both the autocatalytic and diffusion-controlled curing mechanism.