High-Performance High-Tg Epoxy System for Filament Winding Applications

Epoxy resins are among the most versatile thermosetting materials, widely used in various industrial applications such as coatings, adhesives, civil engineering, aerospace, and electronics. Epoxies cured with aromatic amines typically exhibit outstanding chemical resistance and high thermal stability. Consequently, they are widely used in demanding structural composite applications in aerospace, military, and oil & gas industries. However, since aromatic amines have low electron density on nitrogen due to the conjugation of the aromatic ring, they are much less reactive toward epoxy rings compared to aliphatic or cycloaliphatic amines, which necessitates high curing temperatures and long curing times. In this work, we report a bisphenol A-based epoxy system with an accelerated aromatic amine curing agent, which provides a highglass transition temperature (e.g. 170-180 °C), long latency at ambient conditions (e.g., 2 days at23 °C), fast curing at elevated temperatures, low viscosity for easy fiber impregnation, and curedparts with excellent mechanical properties. This novel system is particularly useful forfabricating composite parts using the filament winding process, as well as for providing highchemical and thermal resistance.