N N N' N'tetra(3-aminopropyl)-1 6-diaminohexane (TADH) a nonlinear multifunctional polyamine was prepared and employed as a novel hardener for diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (DGEBA) Nonisothermal reactions of DGEBA/TADH were systematically investigated with differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) According to the Malek method the two-parameter Sestak-Berggren model was selected to simulate the reaction rate with a good match achieved and a correlation of effective activation energies E-alpha with fractional conversion a was determined with the mode-free isoconversional Vyazovkin method As a rose E-alpha reduced quickly from 65 to 57 kJ/mol up to alpha approximate to 15%, then decreased slowly to 50 kJ/mol till alpha approximate to 75% and finally dropped to 30 kJ/mol at full conversion In addition analysis of thermal stability of the cured DGEBA/TADH with thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) revealed that it possessed quite good thermal stability and increased residual char content at 600 C in nitrogen Furthermore dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) of the DGEBA/TADH network showed its relaxations were characterized by localized motions of hydroxyl ether segments (beta relaxation) and cooperative motions of whole network chains (glass relaxation) at different temperature regions (C) 2010 Elsevier B V All rights reserved