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.