Cyber-Physical Systems for Epoxy Resin Insulators: Development and Study

The current work is performed during a research project to implement an enhanced Cyber-Physical Systems for producing electrical insulators based on thermosets. As these materials undergo a highly exothermic curing reaction during production, appropriate production control is crucial to prevent issues, such as air pockets, suboptimal surface finish, cracks, or part deformation due to non-uniform curing and residual stresses. Therefore, extensive material characterization is combined with suitable material modeling to achieve exact virtual predictions of the curing process. Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) under non-isothermal (dynamic) conditions is employed to characterize the curing behavior, providing crucial insights into thermal properties and phase transitions. The reaction kinetics are modeled using model-based methods, i.e., Prout-Tompkins, and model-free kinetic models, i.e. Flynn-Wall-Ozawa and Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose. Thus, the activation energy, pre-exponential factor, and other kinetic parameters required for analysis are determined. The curing progress of the epoxy material under isothermal conditions is predicted and validated with reaction data obtained from the isothermal DSC measurements.