Publication: Bioplastic composite foam prepared from poly(lactic acid) and natural wood flour
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Issued Date
2016
Resource Type
File Type
application/pdf
ISSN
0094243X
Other identifier(s)
2-s2.0-84984550436
Rights Holder(s)
มหาวิทยาลัยศรีนครินทรวิโรฒ
Bibliographic Citation
AIP Conference Proceedings. Vol 1713, (2016)
Suggested Citation
Suwannakas P., Petrchwattana N., Covavisaruch S. Bioplastic composite foam prepared from poly(lactic acid) and natural wood flour. AIP Conference Proceedings. Vol 1713, (2016). doi:10.1063/1.4942309 Retrieved from: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14740/5573
Author(s)
Abstract
The major drawbacks of Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) bioplastic are its cost and brittleness. This study aims to reduce the cost by foaming PLA reinforced with wood flour. A series of PLA/ natural fiber (WF) composite was prepared by using WF of selected conifers up to 5 wt%; each composite formulation was then foamed using 2 wt% of Azodicarbonamide (ADC) as chemical foaming agent. ADC effectively reduced the density of PLA and the PLA/WF composite foam by about 45% to 0.64 g/cm3 from 1.24 g/cm3 of neat PLA and 1.26 g/cm3 of PLA/WF composites when 2 wt% ADC was applied. Mechanical behaviors in terms of compressive and impact properties were investigated. With the presence of WF, the compressive stress increased with the WF content due to the good interfacial adhesion between the PLA matrix and the WF. This was verified by microscopic observation, leading to efficient stress transfer at the interface between PLA matrix and the WF. The presence of WF raised the specific compressive modulus and strength of PLA/WF composites to around 0.94 GPa·cm3/g and 2.65 MPa·cm3/g but foaming the PLA or the PLA/WF composites led to a dramatic reduction of the compressive modulus to 0.2-0.4 GPa·cm3/g, implying that the PLA and the PLA/WF foams had become softened. This was evidently observed in the significant reduction of hardness coupled with the vast drop of stress required to compressively deform the foams. © 2016 AIP Publishing LLC.