Process Modelling the Cure of Bisphenol-A Epoxy/Jeffamine System Using ICME

The prediction of thermo-mechanical properties of a thermoset resin at different stages of cure is a complex process. An Integrated Computational Material Engineering (ICME) approach is used to predict the properties of a EPON828/Jeffamine D230 system. The proposed framework integrates two length scales - nano and microscale. Molecular Dynamics (MD) is used to predict the volume shrinkage and mechanical properties of the epoxy resin as a function of the progressing crosslink density at room temperature using the Reactive Interface forcefield (IFF-R). The predicted resin properties show good agreement with the literature, proving that IFF-R can be reliably used for this purpose. Once characterized, the predicted properties are used to further predict the effects of cure shrinkage and property transformation on the bulk-level composite residual stresses.