This reference comprehensively details the analysis, synthesis, and chemistry of thermosetting polymers, blends, and networks and describes practical methods, processes, and formulations of specialized thermosetting polymer materials for industrial applications. Contains diagrams showcasing the structural transformations that may occur during a cure cycle Compiling research spanning two decades, Thermosetting Polymers is an in-depth volume suitable for polymer and materials scientists; plastics, chemical, and polymer engineers; experimental, physical, and polymer chemists; polymer, materials, chemical, and experimental physicists; and upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in these disciplines.

This book aims to rehabilitate kinetic modeling in the domain of polymer ageing, where it has been almost abandoned by the research community. Kinetic modeling is a key step for lifetime prediction, a crucial problem in many industrial domains in which needs cannot be satisfied by the common empirical methods. This book proposes a renewed approach of lifetime prediction in polymer oxidative ageing. This approach is based on kinetic models built from relatively simple mechanistic schemes but integrating physical processes (oxygen diffusion and stabilizer transport), and use property (for instance mechanical failure) changes. An important chapter is dedicated to radiation-induced oxidation and its most important applications: radiochemical ageing at low dose rates and photo-chemical ageing under solar radiation. There is also a chapter devoted to the problem of ageing under coupled oxidation and mechanical loading.