Mechanical Properties of Jute/PLA Injection Molded Products-All Natural Composites

Natural composites have been important materials system due to preservation of earth environments. Natural fibers such as jute, hemp, bagasse and so on are very good candidate of natural composites as reinforcements. On the other hand regarding matrix parts thermosetting polymer and thermoplastic polymer deriver form petrochemical products are not environmental friendly material, even if thermoplastic polymer can be recycled. In order to create fully environmental friendly material (FEFM) biodegradable polymer which can be deriver from natural resources is needed. Therefore poly(lactic acid) (PLA) polymer is very good material for the FEFM. However, PLA is very brittle polymer, so that polymer chemists have been made the efforts to make tough PLA. In this paper Jute/PLA composites was fabricated by injection moldings and mechanical properties were measured. It is believable that industries will have much attention to FEFM, so that injection molding was adopted to fabricate the composites. Long fiber pellet pultrusion technique was adopted to prepare jute fiber-PLA pellet (Jute/PLA). Because it is a new method which is able to fabricate composite pellets with relative long length fibers for injection molding process, where, jute yarns were continuously pulled and coated with PLA resin. Here two kinds of PLA materials were used including the one with mold releasing agent and the other is without it. After pass through a heated die whereby PLA resin impregnates into the jute yarns and sufficient cooling, the impregnated jute yarns were cut into pellets. Then Jute/PLA pellets were fed into injection machine to make dumbbell shape specimens. In current study, the effects of temperature of heat die i.e. impregnation temperature and the kind of PLA were focused to get optimum molding condition. The volume fractions of jute fiber in pellet were measured by several measuring method including image analyzing, density measurement and dissolution methods. And the mechanical property were investigated by tensile and Izod testing. It is found that 250 degree is much suitable for Jute/PLA long fiber pultrusion process. Additionally the jute fibers seem much effective to increase the tensile modulus and the Izod strength. That is to say, the addition of Jute fiber in PLA, the brittle property can be improved.