## 8 Discussion
For example, the prediction of the isothermal heat flow is systematically underestimated by about 10% for the start of the reaction, but the overall prediction is still good. It should be noted that it was not possible to find a consistent set of parameters using the standard DSC analysis based on regular function fitting. Ambiguous kinetic parameters were obtained, valid for only one dataset, but not another. It is possible to evaluate each of the kinetic triplet parameters in more depth and more accurately. Some indications on how this can be done were described earlier. But the goal of this study was to describe the degree of curing and the heat of curing during the molding process of components. A more detailed description of the individual processes does not necessarily improve the prediction of the progress of the curing of the material. Discrepancies between the model and reality appear mainly at low curing rates and very high curing rates. Both are not so critical for most molding processes. At low conversion the polymer is still close to being liquid. At high conversion the curing process is essentially finished anyway. The approach described here should be applicable to many other polymers than the filled polyurethane that was described here. One assumption made in this work was that the heat measured during the DSC tests is not influenced by a phase transition. If this approach is applied to an epoxy resin, this may not be right. The temperature of the epoxy may cross the glass transition temperature during curing. In this case the baseline correction would get somewhat more complicated. If modulated temperature DSC is used to monitor the dependency of the heat capacity from the conversion [44; 71], the baseline can be reconstructed [55]. Since the temperature dependent heat capacity is also needed for simulating the heat development during the cure at least one temperature modulated DSC experiment should be performed. In contrast to polyurethane, the cure of epoxy is usually described with kinetic models containing more than one reaction pathway, and thus more than one reaction rate coefficient. However, it has been shown that the isoconversional method can also be applied to determine the kinetic parameters in such cases [23; 24; 26; 27; 80]. If the kinetic triplet of a new polymer shall be investigated it is sufficient to perform only the dynamic tests with a DSC. However, the authors feel that double checking of the activation energy with dynamic and isothermal data is advantageous. Many material properties are dependent on the degree of cure. Thus, calculating the degree of cure is relevant for many applications and control of production processes. For example, the development of the (cure) shrinkage of a polymer can be determined by e.g., embedding optical fibers into the liquid material and monitoring the strain during the curing process [83]. Then another simple Abaqus user subroutine (UEXPAN) can be used to simulate said cure shrinkage, allowing more insight into the characteristics of a large polymer cast. This illustrates that the isoconversional method as described above stands just at the beginning of further possibilities.