Effect of physical aging on the creep deformation of an epoxy resin

This paper is concerned with an experimental study of the the influence of physical aging and temperature on the creep deformation of epoxy resin. Master curves for various aging conditions were found to collapse into a single smooth curve corresponding to a reference aging condition after suitable horizontal translation. It is proposed that the resulting curve be designated the 'master-master curve' and the corresponding time scale the 'reduced-reduced time'. In addition, the amount of horizontal translation, the aging parameter, can be used to estimate the aging process. We have also shown that there is one-to-one correspondence between the aging parameter and polymer density.