Morphology and mechanical behaviour of engineering soy plastics Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • The morphology and mechanical behaviour of high protein content engineering soy plastics are investigated. These engineering soy plastics can possess significantly higher Young's moduli (4.4GPa) than those of petrochemical engineering plastics, if the moisture content in the soy plastics is kept low (<5% by weight). The low moisture soy plastic is found to be tougher than diglycidyl ether of bisphenol-A epoxy resins (0.96 MPa m1/2 vs 0.8 MPa m1/2). The observed high fracture toughness in the dry soy plastics is attributed to the formation of multiple line arrays of cavitated voids (croids) in the damage zone. The formation of croids may be associated with the presence of coagulated protein bodies (<0.05 m) in the soy plastics matrix. The ductility and dimensional stability of soy plastics is found to depend strongly on the moisture content or the level of plasticizer utilized in the matrix. The biodegradable soy plastics show good potential as an alternative for replacing petrochemical, nonbiodegradable, plastics for engineering applications. 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.

published proceedings

  • POLYMER

altmetric score

  • 3

author list (cited authors)

  • Sue, H. J., Wang, S., & Jane, J. L.

citation count

  • 92

complete list of authors

  • Sue, HJ||Wang, S||Jane, JL

publication date

  • September 1997