Usage of DMA instruments

Now there are four main areas of DMA use, which are molecular structure characterisation, general material analysis, food and biomedical testing and the derivation of engineering data. The first category is explained above. Clearly, this explains the use of DMA in polymer 

The vast expansion of the use of DMA has occurred in the field of polymeric material analysis. First, DMA is one of the best techniques for assessing the amorphous content of a material. It is important to know how much amorphous material is present in a number of situations. Since DMA is sensitive to molecular structure it is frequently used to check one sample against another that is meant to be the same. Also, processing can have a large effect on final properties. For thermoplastics DMA is sensitive to the level of crystaUinity, physical age state and polymerisation. For thermosets, the state of cure can be readily determined and as DMA is a mechanical test useful information can be obtained on interfacial properties for composite materials. To a certain extent this category overlaps with the first, except that fewer measurements are made and a complete molecular profile of the material under test is not obtained. This general usage probably accounts for 40-50% of all DMA. 

A more specialised area of use of DMA is the derivation of engineering data. DMAs are 

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