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Abstract Biocomposites are promising materials for traditional composites replacement in specific applications due to their interesting properties and sustainability. Although the composite components are manufactured near net shape, some machining operations, commonly drilling, are commonly required prior to mechanical joining of the components. Tool geometry, mainly the point angle of the drill, strongly affects the performance of the drilling process of composites in terms of machining induced damage. The aim of this work is analyzing the influence of the point angle of the drill on the damage generated during drilling of 100% biodegradable composite, using both numerical and experimental approaches. The novelty of the work relies on the lack of studies of drilling 100% biodegradable composites. The influence of the point angle on the thrust forces and hence in the machining induced damage was demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study of the impact behaviour and the post-impact residual strength of fully biodegradable composites is presented in this work. To this end, low-velocity impact tests and compressive residual strength tests were carried out on flax/PLA laminates. The results were compared with carbon/epoxy laminates, showing some important advantages in terms of absorbed energy and normalized residual strength. The reason was attributed to different energy absorption mechanisms; the main failure mode in flax/PLA laminates is fibre failure while residual strength of carbon/epoxy laminates is dominated by delaminations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, the effects of chemical pretreatment and different fiber loadings on mechanical properties of the composites at the sub-micron scale were studied through nanoindentation. The composites were prepared by incorporating choline chloride (ChCl) pretreated rice husk waste (RHW) in low-density polyethylene (LDPE) using melt processing, followed by a thermal press technique. Nanoindentation experiments with quasi continuous stiffness mode (QCSM) were performed on the surface of produced composites with varying content of pretreated RHW (i.e., 10, 15, and 20 wt.%). Elastic modulus, hardness, and creep properties of fabricated composites were measured as a function of contact depth. The results confirmed the appreciable changes in hardness, elastic modulus, and creep rate of the composites. Compliance curves indicated that the composite having 20 wt.% of pretreated RHW loading was harder compared to that of the pure LDPE and other composite samples. The values of elastic modulus and hardness of the composite containing 20 wt.% pretreated RHW were increased by 4.1% and 24% as compared to that of the pure LDPE, respectively. The creep rate of 42.65 nm/s and change in depth of 650.42 nm were also noted for the composite with RHW loading of 20 wt.%, which showed the substantial effect of holding time at an applied peak load of 100 mN. We believe that the developed composite could be a promising biodegradable packaging material due to its good tribo-mechanical performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents and analyzes the behavior of bumper beams made of PLA/flax composites subjected to low velocity impacts. The relevance of this material resides in the biodegradability of both fibers and matrix. Moreover, the after-impact behavior of this composite is excellent due to the absence of delamination. Impact tests have been performed using a drop weight tower within the range of impact energies 5 J ≤ E imp ≤ 73 J. The experimental setup enabled the measuring of impact velocity, residual velocity, load-time history and failure mode. Results show that damage generated during impact produces a significant reduction of residual stiffness but the residual strength is not affected by damage generated in the range of the applied impact energies considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]