## 5 Experimental Methods  
### General DSC Setup and Procedures  
In principle a user of this method needs to perform just a number of dynamic DSC experiments with different heating rates. The above presented methods take this data as input and yield \(E_{\alpha}\), \(A_{\alpha}\) and \(f(\alpha)\). We have performed both dynamic and isothermal DSC experiments. The results obtained by these two different datasets differ little from each other. However, the compensation effect works only with data that exhibits a temperature ramp. Thus, with two minor exceptions, the input parameters used to perform the simulations were obtained with dynamic DSC data. The exceptions will be discussed in the appropriate sections. A Discovery DSC 250 from TA Instruments with a TRIOS software package and TZero Pans with TZero hermetic lids were used to acquire the necessary DSC data. The mass of the samples was ca. 10 mg. Seven isothermal and ten dynamic experiments were performed. In all experiments one and the same reference pan was used. Before the experiment started the temperature of the DSC was set to the desired value and the sample pan was carefully placed onto the constant body. On average 30 s (\(\pm\)2 s) passed between opening the chamber to place the sample and starting the collection of the data. In isothermal experiments the sample was held for a certain amount of time at a given temperature. In dynamic experiments the samples were heated from 292 K to 423 K with different heating rates and then held at 423 K for 30 min to allow them to reach 100% conversion. A sketch of these two general principles can be found in Figure 2 and important experimental parameters can be found in Table 2. In Appendix B the details how the isothermal and dynamic experiments were performed can be found. Each experiment was repeated with the fully cured sample to establish the baseline. The reason for this was that for the dynamic experiments no reaction endpoint could be determined from the initial experiment(s) because the sample(s) did not reach 100% conversion during the temperature ramp. An example is shown in Appendix C. These second experiments exhibited straight heat flow lines. The actual heat flow during the curing of the sample was then determined by subtracting the second run from the first. This can be justified since heat capacity measurements suggest that the material properties are governed by the unknown filler material (cf. Section 7.2) which is not affected by the chemical reaction or the changing properties of the curing polymer. This simple method is also within the scope of this article to provide a practical approach for engineers to gather data. All the DSC data was exported to ASCII-files to allow analysis outside the proprietary DSC program. These experiments provided the input data, which was used to obtain the limits of the integral in Equation (5) which then were used in Equation (4) to determine the conversion dependent activation energies. Only the data from the dynamic experiments was utilized to obtain the compensation parameters according to Equation (6). Afterwards, from both datasets again, the actual kinetic function was calculated using Equation (9). Lastly one temperature modulated experiment was performed to investigate the heat capacity properties of the material. The amplitude of the temperature modulation was 1 K over a period of 60 s. A sample of 14.063 mg was first held for 4000 min at 293 K. Thus the dependency of the heat capacity from the degree of cure could be established. Subsequently the temperature was increased with 2 K/min to 423 K to investigate the temperature dependency of the heat capacity of the same (now fully cured) sample.