Study on the Effect of Carboxyl Terminated Butadiene Acrylonitrile (CTBN) Copolymer Concentration on the Decomposition Kinetics Parameters of Blends of Glycidyl Epoxy and Non-Glycidyl Epoxy Resin

Abstract

The degradation of the epoxy system was studied for the prepared six blend samples with the incorporation of 0 wt% - 25 wt% carboxyl terminated butadiene acrylonitrile (CTBN) copolymer, on a dynamic basis using Thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA) technique under a nitrogen atmosphere. The blends were prepared by physical mixing and were cured with diamine. The degradation of each sample followed second-order degradation kinetics, which was calculated by Coats-Redfern equation using best-fit analysis. This was further confirmed by linear regression analysis. The validity of data was checked by t-test statistical analysis. From this value of reaction order, activation energy (E), and pre-exponential factor (Z) were calculated. It was found that the activation energy increased with the addition of liquid elastomer.