EFFECT OF FIBRE CONTENT ON THE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF BASALT FIBRE REINFORCED POLYLACTIC ACID (PLA) COMPOSITES

A widespread use of composite materials leads researchers to search for sustainable raw materials. In the present work, a sustainable thermoplastic polylactic acid (PLA) based composite materials were aimed to produce by extrusion followed with compression moulding method. The chopped basalt fibres with the length of 3 mm were also used as natural inorganic fibre source to reinforce PLA matrices obtained natural resources with the different contents until 50% by weight. Composite pellets were manufactured by a single screw extruder and followed composite panels were manufactured in the hot compression moulding machine. All of the composite samples were experimented to density, tensile, bending and impact tests. The results indicated that the density of the composite materials increase with the increasing of the content of basalt fibres. Besides, the increment of fibre content and about 180% increase compare to pure PLAlinearly enhanced the tensile and flexural modulus of composite materials. As a result of statistical evaluation, basalt fibre reinforcedPLA composites at fibre content of45 wt% were found to have significant difference among other fibre contents and had highest tensile, flexural and impact strength results of 53.73 MPa, 118 MPa and 1.49 kJ/m 2 , respectively