Abstract
In this work, thermogravimetric analysis is used to determine the kinetic parameters of thermal degradation of polyurethane (PU) elastomers, based on poly(ether polyol) soft segment and aromatic-type diisocyanates. To determine the kinetic parameters of PU thermal decomposition, a nonlinear regression procedure is applied. Parameter estimation is obtained by minimizing the weighted quadratic output error functional with the modified Nelder-Mead simplex search algorithm. The confidence region of pre-exponential factor-activation energy are established both for the first and second steps of degradation. The effect of the soft segment molecular weight and hard segment content on the activation energy of the degradation process has been studied.
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