Curing kinetics, thermal and erosive wear characteristics of bismaleimide blends modified by polyaryletherketone

The work aimed to study the effect of thermoplastic polyaryletherketone (PAEK) on the curing kinetics, thermal stability and erosive wear performances of bismaleimide (BMI) resin blends. Toughened bismaleimide blends were fabricated using the allyl compound modified bismaleimide resin prepolymer as matrix and PAEK as a toughening agent by blending method. The modified PAEK/BMI blends were characterized and analyzed using the fourier transform infrared (FTIR), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), the swirling water jet erosive wear apparatus, scanning electron microscope (SEM) and three-dimensional surface profilometer. No obvious glass transition was observed for PAEK modified BMI blends in the temperature range of 50–350°C. In addition, the char yields ( Y c ) and the heat-resistance index ( T HRI ) of the PAEK/BMI blends were affected by PAEK addition. The kinetic parameters, such as the activation energy and the pre-exponential factor of the PAEK/BMI blends were also higher than that of unmodified BMI blends, indicating that the incorporation of PAEK could promote the curing reaction of the epoxy resin without changing the curing mechanism. The erosive wear rate increased with the addition of PAEK especially when the mass fraction of PAEK was 10 parts per hundred of resins ( phr.). These results suggested that the thermal stability of the PAEK/BMI blends was significantly enhanced while the erosive wear resistance decreased by introducing the PAEK.