No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Studies of the thermal degradation of a thermoplastic polyurethane elastomer are performed to understand its kinetics. Kinetic parameters are an important part of characterizing the behavior of a material used in high temperature environments. Many engineering applications require that the materials used have high resistance to thermal degradation. Experiments using polymers loaded with nanoparticles have shown that the kinetic parameters can be vastly different than the kinetic parameters of the neat polymer. The kinetic parameters change in such a way that the thermal degradation of materials loaded with nanoparticles is delayed compared to that of the neat material. The effect of loading the rmoplastic polyurethane elastomer with montmorillonite organoclay and multiwall carbon nanotubes is presented along with the kinetic parameters calculated for each material. The thermogravimetric analyses of these materials are conducted at low heating rates (from 20 to 100 o C/min (CPM )). A study will be presented to analyze if the kinetics calculated from these data sets are valid parameters to describe the kinetics of experiments conducted at much higher heating rates (up to 500 CPM ).

No abstract