The influence of the active diluents cyclohexene oxide on the curing processing

The curing behavior and kinetics of epoxy resin (diglycidyl ether of bisphenol-A) with curing agent polyamidoamine and cyclohexene oxide as active diluents were investigated by differential scanning calorimetry. The apparent activation energy obtained by Kissinger method was 44.37 kJ mol−1. The result of model-fitting kinetic analysis showed that autocatalytic model (Sestak–Berggren model) was suitable to describe the curing mechanism. The thermal–mechanical properties were characterized with dynamic mechanical analysis, and the activation energies for α relaxation were calculated according to the Arrhenius law. Thermogravimetric analysis showed that the performance of the thermal decomposition almost stayed the same although reactive diluent (cyclohexene oxide) was added in curing system.