Cyber-Physical Systems for Epoxy Resin Insulators: Development and Study

The current work is performed during a research project to implement an enhanced Cyber-Physical Systems for producing electrical insulators based on thermosets. As these materials undergo a highly exothermic curing reaction during production, appropriate production control is crucial to prevent issues, such as air pockets, suboptimal surface finish, cracks, or part deformation due to non-uniform curing and residual stresses. Therefore, extensive material characterization is combined with suitable material modeling to achieve exact virtual predictions of the curing process. Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) under non-isothermal (dynamic) conditions is employed to characterize the curing behavior, providing crucial insights into thermal properties and phase transitions. The reaction kinetics are modeled using model-based methods, i.e., Prout-Tompkins, and model-free kinetic models, i.e. Flynn-Wall-Ozawa and Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose. Thus, the activation energy, pre-exponential fact