Abstract
Recently, the Federal EPA increased legislation to address hazardous emissions from composite manufacturing and repair by enacting new emission standards, which specifically target styrene as a regulated hazardous air pollutant. One method of reducing styrene emissions from vinyl ester (VE) resins is to replace some or all of the styrene with fatty acid-based monomers. Fatty acid monomers are ideal candidates because they are inexpensive, have low volatilities, and promote global sustainability. Thermal cure of these resins results in materials with fairly low T g and moduli. E-beam cure has been found to increase T g by 25°C and increase the modulus by 20%. FTIR analysis showed that these property improvements can be attributed to higher monomer conversion with E-beam relative to thermal cure. In addition, fatty acid monomers can be potentially used as a component in rubbery materials and elastomers. To test their ability to be used in these materials, fatty acid monomers were mixed with small amounts (<10%) of multi-functional monomers, such as VE and acrylated triglycerides. These polymers were very fragile when thermally cured. On the other hand, the resulting polymers were much tougher and had higher T g and monomer conversions when cured via E-beam.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 143-154 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | International SAMPE Symposium and Exhibition (Proceedings) |
| Volume | 49 |
| State | Published - 2004 |
| Externally published | Yes |
| Event | 49th International SAMPE Symposium and Exhibition: Materials and Processing Technology - 60 Years of SAMPE Progress, SAMPE 2004 - Long Beach, CA, United States Duration: May 16 2004 → May 20 2004 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- General Materials Science
- Mechanics of Materials
- Mechanical Engineering