• Composites Research
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.71-78
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• 1999

To determine the effect of chemical structure of linear amine curing agents on thermal and mechanical properties, standard epoxy resin DGEBA was cured with diaminodiphenyl methane (DDM), diaminodiphenyl sulphone (DDS) in a stoichiometrically equivalent ratio. From this work, the effect of aromatic amine curing agents. In contrast, the results show that the DGEBA/DDS cure system having the sulfone structure between the benzene rings had higher values in the conversion of epoxide, density, shrinkage (%), glass transition temperature, tensile modulus and strength, flexural modulus and strength than the DGEBA/DDM cure system having methylene structure between the benzene rings, whereas the DGEBA/DDM cure system presented higher values in the maximum exothermic temperature, thermal expansion coefficient, and thermal stability. These results are caused by the relative effects of sulfone group having strong electronegativity and methylene group having (+) repulsive property and stem from the effect of the conversion ratio of epoxide group. The result of fractography shows that the each grain size of the DDM/DGEBA system with feather-like structure is larger than that of the DDS/DGEBA system.