Аннотация
Abstract Among all of the methods used for the development and study of the degradation of a polymer, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) is the most widespread. This study is interested in the modelling of the mass losses of rigid polyurethane foam under linear heating rates in an inert atmosphere using the Invariant Kinetic Parameters (IKP) method. The degradation of rigid polyurethane foam is a five‐stage process under a nitrogen atmosphere. The first stage of degradation has not been modelled because of too low a number of points. The model of potential law for the second stage, the model of reaction order for the third stage and a mixture of reaction order, phase‐boundary reaction and nucleation for the fourth stage are found to be the most adequate ones. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.