Monitoring and simulations of hydrolysis in epoxy matrix composites during hygrothermal aging

Jalal El Yagoubi (1) , Gilles Lubineau (2) , Abderrazak Traidia (2) , Jacques Verdu (3)

1 LCTS - Laboratoire des Composites Thermostructuraux
2 KAUST - King Abdullah University of Science and Technology [Saudi Arabia]
3 PIMM - Laboratoire Procédés et Ingénierie en Mécanique et Matériaux

In this paper, we studied the water transport in thermoset matrices. We used Fourier Transform Infrared analysis (FTIR) during sorption/desorption experiments to investigate the interaction between sorbed water and the epoxy network. Our results demonstrated that the polymer matrix undergoes hydrolysis. We found that the chemical species involved in the reaction process was the residual anhydride groups. These results support the physical basis of the three-dimensional (3D) diffusion/reaction model. We finally showed that this model is able to reproduce multi-cycle sorption/desorption experiment, as well as water uptake in hybrid metal/epoxy samples. We simulated the 3D distributions of the diffusing water and the reacted water.

Mots clés: Theromosetting resin; Polymer–matrix composites (PMCs); Chemical analysis; Environmental degradation

Domaines: Polymères; Matériaux; Mécanique [physics.med-ph]

Jalal El Yagoubi, Gilles Lubineau, Abderrazak Traidia, Jacques Verdu. Monitoring and simulations of hydrolysis in epoxy matrix composites during hygrothermal aging. Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing, 2014, 68, pp.184-192. ⟨10.1016/j.compositesa.2014.10.002⟩. ⟨hal-01086406⟩