Journal article
Effects of Reactivity Ratios on Network Topology and Thermomechanical Properties in Vinyl Ester/Styrene Thermosets: Molecular Dynamics Simulations
Macromolecular theory and simulations, v 28(6), pp 1-8
01 Nov 2019
Abstract
Styrene-based thermoset polymers using vinyl ester crosslinkers offer the potential ability to tune material properties via control of network topology, measured primarily by the distribution of poly(styrene) molecular weight between vinyl esters. Clearly, demonstrating a relationship between topology and properties in the glassy state has so far proven difficult using experimental approaches. Here, an approach to control network topology in molecular simulations of randomly crosslinking systems via relative reactivity is presented. Several models of nearly fully cured (vinyl ester)/styrene (VE/ST) thermosets at fixed monomer composition but with a large range of distributions of molecular weight between crosslinks, M-c, are generated. It is found that fully cured VE/ST thermosets have glass transition temperatures and glassy Young's moduli that are insensitive to M-c distributions at fixed monomer composition. Using extreme cases of relative reactivity, it is also established that glassy-state thermomechanical properties are sensitive to the overall density of crosslinks.
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Details
- Title
- Effects of Reactivity Ratios on Network Topology and Thermomechanical Properties in Vinyl Ester/Styrene Thermosets: Molecular Dynamics Simulations
- Creators
- Ming Huang - Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering Drexel University 3141 Chestnut Street Philadelphia PA 9104Cameron Abrams - Drexel University
- Publication Details
- Macromolecular theory and simulations, v 28(6), pp 1-8
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Number of pages
- 8
- Grant note
- Army Research Laboratory; United States Department of Defense; US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) ACI-1548562 / National Science Foundation; National Science Foundation (NSF) TG-MCB070073N / Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) Stampede2 at the Texas Advanced Supercomputing Center
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Chemical and Biological Engineering
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000482296900001
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85070901666
- Other Identifier
- 991019169636504721
InCites Highlights
Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:
- Web of Science research areas
- Polymer Science