Influence of Epoxidized Natural Rubber of the thermoformability of Poly(Lactic Acid) biopolymer films using elevated temperature ball burst tests

Abstract

In this paper, we investigated the thermoformability of Epoxidized Natural Rubber (ENR)-filled Poly(Lactic Acid) (PLA) films using elevated temperature tensile and ball burst tests. Three different d-Lactide contents of PLA were used to be able to analyze the effect of crystallization and crystallinity. We observed that the ENR acted as a nucleating agent in PLA when the blend was cooled from melt or cold crystallized, but it retarded the drawing-induced crystallization of PLA at elevated temperature tensile testing since ENR droplets acted as obstacles. The effect of NR on PLA crystallization was also found to be dependent on d-Lactide content. In the ball burst test, different behaviors were observed for PLA with the lowest d-Lactide content, which was caused by the complex stress state that even more induced crystallization of PLA and then a single-axis tensile test.