Study of the temporal change of the insulating constant of polymeric materials during the reaction process of polymeric molecules with sclerosing molecules

Abstract A computer sound card based data acquisition system is built and used to study the small variations in the static dielectric constant of resin-hardener type epoxy during the process of polymerization per to solidification. The system involves self correction of any effects related to spurious fluctuations related to mains voltage changes. Results using several mixing ratios of resin and hardener indicate some structures in the dielectric constant- time relation. Such structures can not be explained by simple exponential behavior associated with direct one step reaction. A simple two steps reaction model is suggested .The model results in better fits of the experimental data.