Adhesive Curing Temperatures

[stew29681]

I have been recently evaluating a new adhesive's lap shear strenght as a function of cure temperature. My sample group is small, but I see a trend of increasing lap shear strenght as the cure temperature increases. Can someone tell if this is a valid relationship and why?

 

[btrueblood]

Sounds right. Increased cure temp. means the cure process (cross linking, polymerization, and whatnot) will tend to go faster, or farther to completion in the same time duration. Of course, at some temperature, you will start causing decomposition and/or oxidation to the base polymer, and you will see a decreasing trend in cure strength (and, likely, an increasing trend in smoke and odor production) with increasing temperature.