Applications for polymer materials are ubiquitous and loading a nanoscale species into a polymer to form a nanocomposite has been studied as a way to enhance the mechanical and thermal performance of a polymer material. However, all experiments investigating the thermal stability of polymers and polymer nanocomposites have explored the steady-state heating regime, at heating rates on the order of 20^oC/minute. Militarily relevant applications can involve transient heating, at heating rates several orders of magnitude higher than this. Understanding the material's performance during high-rate heating is important for weapons applications or for high voltage, high-frequency switching, but little is known about the degradation kinetics in this regime or how the nanoscale species influence those kinetics. Fundamental research is required to develop a methodology to study transient heating using a pulsed laser setup, and to apply this methodology to quantify the degradation kinetics of materials of interest during transient thermal loading.

Reference

Leszczynska A, et al: Thermochimica Acta 453: 75, 2007