Abstract
This study deals with the development and evaluation of environment-friendly composites that are composed of polylactic acid (PLA) resin and rice straw. The rice straw fibers were extracted from rice straw harvested in Toyama city. The preliminary composites were prepared by mixed rice straw fiber and PLA resin, followed by drying at 50oC for 24 hours. Rice straw green composites were fabricated by the vacuum assisted hot pressing method. The mould temperature was changed from 150oC to 210oC, in order to investigate the effect of molding conditions on the mechanical properties of rice straw green composites. The molding pressure and time was fixed to 2 MPa and 10 minutes, respectively. The water evaporation rate for rice straw green composites was measured in order to investigate the variation in moisture with respect to the drying time for rice straw fiber or rice straw/PLA composites. The evaporation rate of rice straw/PLA composites was lower than that of rice straw fiber. The flexural strength and modulus increased with increasing fiber weight fraction of rice straw green composites; a peak flexural strength and a peak flexural modulus was reached at molding temperature ranges near 180oC and a fiber weight fraction of 30 wt.%.
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