Creep behaviour of injection-moulded basalt fibre reinforced poly(lactic acid) composites

Abstract

In this paper, the creep of short (chopped) basalt fibre reinforced poly(lactic acid) composites was investigated; 5, 10, 20 and 30 wt.% short basalt fibre reinforced composites were prepared by using twin-screw extrusion followed by injection moulding. Differential scanning calorimetry measurements revealed that the basalt fibres had nucleating effect on the poly(lactic acid)grade used in this study, while scanning electron microscopy demonstrated that there was strong adhesion between the fibre and the matrix. Fibre distribution analysis showed that there was no significant statistical difference between the average fibre lengths of all of the produced composites. Finally, creep mastercurves were constructed using the single creep curves obtained by applying 10, 20, 30,…, 90% of the tensile strength of the composites as a static creep loading force. It was demonstrated that the basalt fibres as reinforcements can effectively reduce the strain and increase time to failure of the composites during creep load and thus could open the possibilities for poly(lactic acid)-based composites to be used in long-term constantly loaded structural or engineering applications.