An Empirical Model for the Viscosity of Reactive Polymeric Fluids

The rheological properties of reactive materials are of importance in industrial or academic purpose. However, it is hard to characterize these properties for overall range of reaction, because curing reaction accompanies enormous and intricate structural changes. Consequently, it is demanded to establish the model which elucidates the rheological changes as a function of degree of reaction. In this study, we observed the curing behavior of novolac epoxy/phenol novolac/triphenylphosphane (TPP) system in stoichiometrically balanced state. We developed a new empirical model describing the change of rheological profile of epoxy system for the wider range of degree of reaction, α. Newly suggested empirical equation as a function of α is applied to analyze the evolution of rheological variables during polymerization of polymethyl methacrylate. It is shown that the new empirical model is suitable to analyze the viscosity profile for systems including reactions such as curing or polymerization. [Figure not available: see fulltext.].