Chemically induced transition phenomena in polyurethanes as seen from generalized mode Grüneisen parameters.

Many phenomenological properties of reactive polymers like polyurethanes increase or decrease continuously in the course of the curing process before saturating at the end of the chemical reaction. This holds true for instance for the mass density, the refractive index, the chemical turnover and the hypersonic properties. The reason for this monotone behaviour is that the chemical reaction behaves like a continuous succession of irreversible phase transitions. These transitions are superposed by the sol–gel transition and possibly by the chemically induced glass transition, with the drawback that the latter two highlighted transitions are often ¯ h� ¯