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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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THE SCHOOL OF MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Under the provisions of the regulations for the degree
MASTER OF SCIENCE
on Monday, January 6, 2020
10:00 AM
in MRDC 4404
will be held the
MASTER’S THESIS DEFENSE
for
Adam Maffe
"Development of Fundamental Understanding of the Cure Kinetics of Benzoxazine Epoxy Blends"
Committee Members:
Prof. Satish Kumar, Advisor, MSE
Prof. Meisha Shofner, MSE
Dr. Dhriti Nepal, AFRL
Abstract:
This study attempts to bridge the gap between the current fundamental understanding of benzoxazines on the monomer level and their macro scale thermo-mechanical properties. Bisphenol-A based benzoxazine (Bz) was blended with di- and tri-functional epoxies to reduce viscosity for processing, and their resulting thermal and mechanical properties were characterized. Additionally, the formation of inter-molecular and intra-molecular hydrogen bonds was investigated within a Bz-epoxy two component system. Activation energy, heat of reaction, degradation temperature, hydrogen bonding characterization and thermo-mechanical characterization were studied using a differential scanning calorimeter, dynamic mechanical analyzer, thermogravimetric analysis, fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and Instron. Preliminary results show an unexpected synergistic increase in Tg of the blends, for both di- and tri-funcitonal epoxy blends. Surprisingly, while the two components exhibit Tg’s of ~ 150-170 oC, the blended systems consistently exhibited a Tg in the range of 210-250 oC. This work aims to reproduce thermal characterization data for the benzoxazine – di-functional epoxy system, as well as explore a new benzoxazine – tri-functional epoxy based system. Our underlying motivation in this study is to identify the origins of the synergistic increase in Tg upon blending through various thermo-mechanical characterization methods and in-situ FT-IR analysis of curing kinetics.
