Identifying unified kinetic model parameters for thermal decomposition of polymer matrix composites

Predicting thermal responses of composite materials requires accurate input parameters derived from reliable thermal property characterization and kinetic models. Composite material properties and decomposition kinetics vary with temperature and heating rate. Typically, conventional kinetic models derived from thermogravimetric analysis data result in multiple sets of kinetic model parameters, which are difficult to implement into numerical simulations under widely varying temperature and heating rate conditions. Here, a methodology was developed to reliably predict decomposition processes of composite materials with a single (i.e., unified) set of kinetic model parameters. The unified kinetic model parameters for each of four different composite materials were used to accurately predict decomposition kinetics observed over the entire range of experimental temperatures and heating rates. Furthermore, this broadly applicable methodology may predict decomposition from limited data sets, and is expected to extrapolate reliably measurable data to experimentally challenging heating rates and temperatures.