Determination of the Resin Content in DSC Prepreg Samples Using Thermal Analysis Techniques

摘要

Determination of the heat of reaction during the cure of the resin in carbon fiber reinforced epoxy prepreg using differential scanning calorimetry resulted in considerable scatter with the measurements on prepreg samples. Differences in resin content between the DSC prepreg samples were suspected to be the main cause of the observed scatter. During the program a procedure was evaluated to determine the resin content in the DSC prepreg samples. In the procedure the resin fraction in the samples is thermally decomposed in an non-oxidizing atmosphere. It is based on the assumption that there is a fixed ratio between the weight of resin in the original prepreg sample and the weight of cabonaceous residue that remains after complete decomposition of the resin. The weight during thermal decomposition is determined using thermogravimetric analysis. The results indicated that the scatter in the heat of reaction data was reduced significantly when the suggested procedure was applied. However, further evaluation of the procedure is required to establish the validity of the predicted values for resin content and heat of reaction.