For the two last decades, the reduction of fuel consumption and CO2 emissions is a topic of
first importance in automotive industry. Among the possible technical approaches, the
reduction of the vehicles weight seems to be a promising solution. This option can be
achieved by the growing use of lightweight structures based on rigid foams. However, most
of the commercial materials are oil-based and sometimes involve harmful chemical
compounds. Moreover, some products that require long time processes are inadequate
for fulfilling automotive cadence. In this paper, we investigated the development of new
generation of highly reactive epoxy foams. These materials were obtained by mixing epoxidized
plant oil-derivates with a cycloaliphatic amine hardener (isophorone diamine IPDA)
and a harmless foaming agent (sodium bicarbonate NaHCO3 named SB). The chemical
composition of the reactive mixture was optimized by adding several chemical additives
acting as ‘‘exothermicity regulators’’ (ER) in order to control more particularly the exothermicity
of the curing reaction. Their efficiency in the consumption of the heat excess
released during cross-linking was explored. Kinetic rheological analyses, DSC and TGA
experiments were used to tune the dosing of each chemical component in the reactive
formulation. They made it possible the production of foams in a few minutes (