Verification of the capability for quantitative stress prediction during epoxy cure

We previously developed a formalism to calculate the evolution of stresses during the cure of crosslinking polymers. In the present study, we characterized the chemical kinetics and cure-dependent thermophysical properties for two epoxy systems, the diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A cured by either diethanolamine or a mixture of aromatic amines. Well-defined experiments were performed in which the cure stresses for these two epoxies were measured as a function of time. The stresses predicted by our formalism, using the material parameters obtained for the two systems, agreed well with the measured stresses. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.