This paper describes the influence of the curing temperature on the physical and mechanical properties of three structural adhesives. This work was undertaken to improve the understanding of the effect of curing temperature in the glass transition temperature, T _g , and stiffness of epoxy adhesives. The mechanical properties (Young's modulus and yield strength) of the adhesives were measured in bulk specimens. T _g was measured by a dynamic mechanical analysis using an in-house developed apparatus. The curing process was the same for all tests, consisting of a curing stage followed by a post cure stage. The initial stage was performed at different temperatures. T _g and the mechanical properties was found to vary as a function of the cure temperature of the adhesive. When cured below the cure temperature, T _cure , at which the T _g of the fully cured network, T _{g ∞}, is achieved, the strength and stiffness of the adhesive increase as the cure temperature increases and the T _g is higher than the cure temperature. When cured above the T _cure at which the T _{g ∞} is achieved, the strength and stiffness decrease as the cure temperature increases and the T _g is higher than the cure temperature.

Online engineering practice is offering nowadays new potentials for training of measurement technologies and experimental procedures. In a laboratory mainly devoted to instrumentation for measurement by hands-on activity in engineering fields, students and engineering professionals are using, at present, online experiments in a blended-learning approach. A set of experiments has been designed and developed as well as some virtual simulators. The experiments integrated in a Moodle platform are using a Web-server system based on LabVIEW 7.1, linked to them by data acquisition interface cards, a video server, and a booking system developed as an extension of the Moodle platform. This paper reports a particular setup specially designed for remotely measuring and determining mechanical material properties and its combination with the design of a highly interactive user interface. The user may remotely conduct the experiment, getting numerical, graphical, and live video output information and receiving e-mailed experimental results.