Study on Cure Monitoring for Epoxy Resin Using Fiber Optic Sensor System

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The curing of thermoset resin is accompanied with the changes in chemical and physical properties. The cure monitoring techniques can be designed by tracing these property changes. This paper presents the cure monitoring technique with fiber optic sensors to detect the change of refractive index during the polymerization process of engineering epoxy resin. The fiber optic sensor system was developed to measure the reflection coefficient at the interface between the fiber optic and the resin. The correlation between the sensor output and the degree of cure was performed following Lorentz-Lorenz law. The isothermal data from the sensors are compared with the data from differential scanning calorimeter.