Use of tung oil as a reactive toughening agent in dicyclopentadiene-terminated unsaturated polyester resins

- Tung oil (TO) is utilized to improve the toughness of brittle DCPD-UPRs.
- TO is incorporated into DCPD-UPR via intermolecular Diels-Alder reaction.
- Toughness of the obtained matrices is greatly improved.
- Matrix property is affected by effects of phase separation and crosslink density.
- The DCPD-UPR-TO10 matrix gives a best stiffness-toughness balance.