Characterization of Fast Adhesive Curing Reactions—A Novel Experimental Setup

The desire to accelerate adhesive application processes drives the development of rapid curing adhesives. When selecting a certain adhesive for an application, typically a variety of tests is performed in order to characterize its properties. Especially, the mechanical properties and their development under different heating conditions are of interest. Commonly used analytical methods only provide limit information for rapid curing adhesives. This motivates the development of a new experimental setup enabling rheological measurements at high heating rates. This contribution defines requirements for such a novel setup. Induction heating is chosen to facilitate rapid temperature increase. Further, different materials are evaluated for their heating performance and their use for measurement components. A real-time capable temperature control is enabled due to the selected temperature sensor types and positioning. This study develops the design of heating units which can be mounted on a modern rheometer. Additionally, the impact of rapid heating on the measurement accuracy is investigated. Two major factors are identified: the influence of rapid temperature increase on the thermal expansion of the measurement geometry and on the torsional compliance.