Mechanical and Thermal Properties of PLA Biocomposites Reinforced by Coir Fibers

Abstract

In this work, polylactic acid (PLA) biocomposites reinforced with short coir fibers were fabricated using a corotating twin-screw extruder and injection molding machine. Short coir fibers were treated by mixed solution including hydrogen peroxide and sodium hydroxide to improve the adhesion between fibers and PLA matrix. The effects of treated coir fiber content (1, 3, 5, and 7 wt%) on tensile, impact, thermal properties, and surface morphology of PLA biocomposites were investigated. The best impact strength results were obtained for 3 wt% PLA/treated coir fiber biocomposites, where the impact strength was increased by approximately 28% compared to the neat PLA. The tensile modulus of PLA biocomposites was increased by increasing the treated coir fiber content. These results were confirmed by morphological structure analysis. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) results demonstrated a minor effect of the treated coir fiber on thermal behavior of PLA resin. Thermogravimetry analysis (TGA) demonstrated that the thermal stability of the PLA/treated coir fiber biocomposites was reduced by the incorporation of treated coir fiber.

Hybrid and Nonhybrid Laminate Composites of Sugar Palm and Glass Fibre-Reinforced Polypropylene: Effect of Alkali and Sodium Bicarbonate Treatments

“…On the other hand, Figures 7(b) and 7(c), i.e., composites L03 and L04, are characterized with mostly fibre breakage which indicated good adhesion between the fibre and the matrix (polypropylene). It is clear from the SEM analysis that, just like alkali, sodium bicarbonate was able to modify the surface of the sugar palm fibre for better adhesion as evidently seen in another research [59].…”

Effect of (3‐aminopropyl)triethoxysilane coupling agent on characteristics and mechanical properties of polylactic acid/jute fiber biocomposite

“…Consequently, this led to the reduction in mobility of the polymer chains resulting in higher rigidity of the biocomposites. [8,9] Meanwhile, the elongation at break of PLA/JF composites did not change significantly and ranged from 2.20 to 2.48 %. Similar to tensile strength, modified JF increased the impact strength of biocomposites comparing with that of unmodified samples.…”

“…Sun and B. Asaithambi concluded that the impact properties of composites were determined by the strength of the interface bonding between the fibers and the resin matrix. [8,9] However, impact strength decreased and remained at 1.47 kJ/m 2 when the content of APTES increased by 10 wt.% because the formation of silane multilayers could reduce the efficiency of absorbing the impact force of JF.…”

Investigation on the Durability of PLA Bionanocomposite Fibers Under Hygrothermal Conditions

“…It is therefore widely used in many applications involving food packaging, automotive parts, disposable tableware, sutures and drug delivery device (Chow et al, 2014). However, expanding the utilization of PLA to other industrial fields is rather limited due to its slow crystallization speed and brittleness to some extent (Sun et al, 2017). To overcome these issues, many studies have shown that adding natural fibers or cellulose nanomaterials is an effective, useful method to reinforce PLA (Mokhena et al, 2018).…”