A Quantitative Determination of the Damping Behavior of Acrylic Based Interpenetrating Polymer Networks

The damping function, D.F., as derived from the area under the linearE″— temperature curve, expresses the amount of mechanical energy converted to heat per unit volume of material. Sometimes characteristics of the damping behavior of homopolymers and IPN's are more apparent in the linear E″—temperature plot, such as glass transitions and secondary transitions. Decrosslinking and/or annealing the IPN's have no effect on the D.F.'s, although these treatments significantly modify the shape of the E″—temperature curves as a result of molecular and phase rearrangements. Thus, to a first approximation, the area expressed by D.F. is a polymer chain characteristic, depending on the chain structure itself but not on crosslinking and/or annealing.