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The kinetics of the thermal cure reaction of Bisphenol A dicyanate (BACY) in presence of various transition metal acetyl acetonates and dibutyl tin dilaurate (DBTDL) was investigated using dynamic differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The cure reaction involved a pregel stage corresponding to around 60% conversion and a postgel stage beyond that. Influence of nature and concentration of catalysts on the cure characteristics was examined and compared with the uncatalyzed thermal cure reaction. The activation energy (E), preexponential factor (A), and order of reaction (n) were computed by the Coats–Redfern method. A kinetic compensation correction was applied to the data in both stages to normalize the E values. The normalized activation energy showed a systematic decrease with increase in catalyst concentration. The exponential relationship between E and catalyst concentration substantiated the high propensity of the system for catalysis. At fixed concentration of the catalyst, the catalytic efficiency as measured by the decrease in E value showed dependency on the nature of the coordinated metal and stability of the acetyl acetonate complex. Among the acetyl acetonates, for a given oxidation state of the metal ions, E decreased with decrease in the stability of the complex. A linear relationship was found to exist between activation energy and the gel temperature for all the systems. Manganese and iron acetyl acetonates were identified as the most efficient catalysts. In comparison to DBTDL, ferric acetyl acetonate proved to be a more efficient catalyst. The activation parameters computed using the Coats–Redfern method agreed well with the results from two other well known integral equations. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Polym Sci A: Polym Chem 37: 1103–1114, 1999

Reactive blends of bisphenol A dicyanate (BACY) and a novolac epoxy resin (EPN) were investigated for their cure behavior and the mechanical, thermal, and physical properties of the cocured neat resin and glass-laminate composites. Contrary to the apparent observation in DSC, the dynamic mechanical analysis confirmed a multistep cure reaction of the blend, in league with an established reaction path for similar systems. The cured matrix was found to contain both polycyanurate and oxazolidinone networks that existed in discrete phases exhibiting independent glass transitions in dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA). The flexible and less crosslinked oxazolidinone network contributed to enhanced flexural strength at the cost of the tensile strength of the neat resin. The increased resin flexibility was, however, not translated to the glass-laminate composite for which the flexural strength decreased with the oxazolidinone content, although the latter was conducive for rendering a stronger interphase. The presence of oxazolidinone adversely affected the thermal stability of the cured resin and the high-temperature performance of both neat resin and the composites.

In this study, we investigated the functional form of the size-defect relationship for software modules through replicated studies conducted on ten opensource products. We consistently observed a power-law relationship where defect proneness increases at a slower rate compared to size. Therefore, smaller modules are proportionally more defect prone. We externally validated the application of our results for two commercial systems. Given limited and fixed resources for code inspections, there would be an impressive improvement in the cost-effectiveness, as much as 341% in one of the systems, if a smallest-first strategy were preferred over a largest-first one. The consistent results obtained in this study led us to state a theory of relative defect proneness (RDP): In large-scale software systems, smaller modules 474 Empir Software Eng (2008) 13:473-498 will be proportionally more defect-prone compared to larger ones. We suggest that practitioners consider our results and give higher priority to smaller modules in their focused quality assurance efforts.