Abstract As frontal polymerization (FP) is being considered as a faster, more energy-efficient, out-of-autoclave manufacturing method for fiber-reinforced thermosetting-polymer-matrix composites (Robertson et al., 2018), the competition between FP and bulk polymerization (BP) is an essential component of the feasibility analysis of the FP-based manufacturing process. To that effect, we present a comparative study of FP and BP based on a nondimensional form of the reaction–diffusion equations that describe the two polymerization processes. From the nondimensional formulation of the thermo-chemical relations, we extract two parameters that involve the key quantities of the cure kinetics model, i.e., the heat of reaction, the time constant, and the activation energy. Although the analysis is general and can be adapted to a wide range of thermosetting-polymer composites, emphasis is placed on unidirectional composites made of carbon or glass fibers embedded in a dicyclopentadiene (DCPD) matrix. The competition between FP and BP is formulated in terms of the time scales involved in the two polymerization processes for the manufacturing of composites of varying sizes and fiber volume fraction values.

中文翻译：

---

纤维增强聚合物基复合材料的正面与本体聚合

摘要 由于正面聚合 (FP) 被认为是一种用于纤维增强热固性聚合物基复合材料的更快、更节能、非高压釜制造方法 (Robertson 等人, 2018)，FP 和本体聚合 (BP) 是基于 FP 的制造工艺可行性分析的重要组成部分。为此，我们基于描述两种聚合过程的反应扩散方程的无量纲形式，对 FP 和 BP 进行了比较研究。从热化学关系的无量纲公式中，我们提取了涉及固化动力学模型关键量的两个参数，即反应热、时间常数和活化能。尽管分析是通用的，并且可以适用于各种热固性聚合物复合材料，但重点放在由嵌入双环戊二烯 (DCPD) 基质中的碳或玻璃纤维制成的单向复合材料。FP 和 BP 之间的竞争是根据制造不同尺寸和纤维体积分数值的复合材料的两种聚合过程所涉及的时间尺度来制定的。