| Abstract: | Biodegradable polylactide acid (PLA) resin can be combined with flax fibers to produce biodegradable composite materials. In our study, commercial PLA fibers were mixed with flax fibers by a non-woven method so as to make nonwoven pre-forms, which can be generated into flax fiber reinforced PLA environmental friendly composites by heat pressing technology. The tensile, flexural and impact properties are tested in order to evaluate the basic physical properties of the composites, and the influenced factors listed as making technology of the pre-forms, weight ratio of flax fibers and heat pressing technology are discussed and optimized, which can be described as weight ratio of flax fibers and PLA fibers is 50/50, heating temperature, time and pressure are respectively 195℃, 20 min and 12.5 Mpa.Preliminary results show that mechanical properties of the flax/PLA composites are quite promising compared with flax/PP composites in common commercial automotive use.Scanning electron microscope (SEM) is used to analyze the tensile specimen fracture surfaces, which shows voids and gaps occurring between flax fibers and PLA matrix and sign of fiber pull-out, the strength of flax/PLA interface can be further improved. |
