• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.11
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• pp.24-30
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• 2018

Various investigations of vegetable oil extracted from natural resources are underway because of their low cost and environmental value. On the other hand, the double bonds in vegetable oil should be substituted to other high reactive functional groups due to their low reactivity for synthesizing bio-polymeric materials. ${\alpha}$-eleostearic acid, which consists of a conjugated triene, is the main component of tung oil, and the conjugated triene allows tung oil to have higher reactivity than other vegetable oils. In this study, tung oil was copolymerized with styrene and divinylbenzene to make a thermoset resin without any substitution of functional groups. The thermal and mechanical properties were measured to examine the effects of the composition of each monomer on the synthesized thermoset resin. The results showed that the products have only one Tg, which means the synthesized thermoset resins are homogeneous at the molecular level. The mechanical properties show that tung oil acts as a soft segment in the copolymer and makes a more elastic product. On the other hand, divinylbenzene acts as a hard segment and makes a more brittle product.