Abstract: Several curing kinetic models for unsaturated polyester resin were introduced in this paper. The isothermal curing kinetics of unsaturated polyester resin with complex initiation system was studied by Differential Scanning Calorimetry(DSC). The modified autocatalytic kinetic model was chosen to deal with the isothermal cure DSC data under isothermal condition, then the reaction rate constant k0 and reaction order m, n were required by nonlinear regression with least-squares method, and the curing kinetic equation of this system was obtained. The results showed that the dependent coefficients under different temperatures were above 98%, and matched experiment data reasonably. It suggested that the chosen model be right for the system, and provided the theoretical and practical reference for studies of compounds based on unsaturated polyesters.

Key words: unsaturated polyester resin, Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), curing kinetics, autocatalytic kinetic model, kinetic equation