Estimation of the reaction kinetic parameters of a mimosa tannin-based thermoset resin with a simulation approach

Abstract This study presents the estimation of the parameters of the polymerization kinetics of a mimosa tannin-based thermosetting resin. A dual approach, experimental and numerical, was used. The numerical approach consisted in solving a time-dependent 0D numerical model of the polymerization kinetics and the heat equation. Thus, the parameters were estimated by minimizing the difference between the measured and the simulation values for four different polymerization kinetics. During the mixing phase, the temperature was recorded in order to observe the impact of the mixer and the introduction of the polymerization catalyst on the temperature. The modelling showed that the reaction starts directly with the introduction of the catalyst and that this data should not be neglected in order to achieve the minimization. A numerical study on the effect of the simulation time showed a very limited impact on the estimation of the parameters. A simulation time of 350 s was chosen in order to better take into account heat losses. The four polymerization kinetics were consistent with the experimental data and the fit improved from kinetics #1 to kinetics #4 as the number of fitting parameters increased, but the results were of the same order of magnitude. In conclusion, this work presents a simple method from an experimental point of view but very effective for estimating the reaction kinetic parameters of a thermosetting resin based on mimosa tannin. The method can probably be adapted to other polymer systems.