Investigation of the relationship of the glass-transition temperature and the polymer structure by fuzzy set theory

Fuzzy set theory can be used to study the relationship between the glass-transition temperature (T-g) and structure of polymers. We used the method to map this relationship and obtained T-g's for 241 polymers with a standard deviation of 20 K (the confidence bound was 90%). We also used the method to predict T-g's for 15 polymers with a standard deviation of 67 K (the confidence bound was 90%). This study demonstrates that fuzzy set theory can be effectively used for determining the quantitative structure-property relationship of polymers. (C) 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 40: 454-459, 2002; DOI 10.1002/polb.10105.