Mechanical Characterisation of a New

Biodegradable Film
C. Casavola, L. Lamberti, G. Mastrandrea and C. Pappalettere
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Meccanica e Gestionale, Politecnico di Bari, Italy

Plastics are utilised in almost every manufacturing industry in the world because of the
favourable balance of mechanical, technological and cost factors. However, to minimise the environmental impact of plastic materials, researchers are attempting to synthesise new biodegradable
polymers that can satisfy also standard requirements on manufacturability and mechanical properties. This paper studies a new material where an aliphaticaromatic biodegradable component is
included in a polyester matrix. For that purpose, microbiological tests, manufacturability tests and
mechanical tests are carried out. In particular, thin films are exposed to the attack of spore colonies
to check if the new material is fully biodegradable and compostable. Material formability in fashion of
blown films is investigated for different volume fractions of biodegradable component added into the
formula. Mechanical behaviour of the new material is then assessed by carrying out tensile tests.
Experimental results demonstrate that thin films of the new material can be produced using the
standard technologies currently available. Mechanical properties are better than those possessed by
traditional non-biodegradable plastics like polyethylene.

ABSTRACT:

KEY WORDS:

biodegradable polymers, mechanical testing, packaging

Introduction
In the last few decades, a wide variety of synthetic
polymers has been developed by industry to satisfy
the increasing demand from market. Plastics are
basically made of petrochemical derivates possessing chemical, physical, electromagnetic and
mechanical properties well suited for the common
industrial applications. However, the widespread
use plastics poses, especially in the leading industrialised countries, many serious concerns on hydrosanitary and environmental safety [16]. Furthermore, the cost of collecting and processing waste
plastics typically exceeds the value of the material.
The number of new plastic containers has also increased in recent years, resulting in corresponding
decreases in the overall recycling rate even though
the total amount recycled has increased [7]. Finally,
the use of non-biodegradable plastics in the life
cycle of naturally biodegradable materials such as
food or humid waste is an inherent contradiction.
These facts suggest following a new rationale in the
industrial production: products must be designed
and engineered from conception to reincarnation.
In simple words, the whole life cycle of the product must be considered [16]. Therefore, a new
generation of materials, products and processes

must be developed relying on principles such as

sustainable development, industrial ecology and
green chemistry.
Biodegradability is the first aspect to be considered
in industrial applications of plastic materials. Some
polymers may degrade under the action of living
organisms (bacteria, fungi and actinomycetes, etc.)
that change substantially the molecular structure of
the material. This process releases in the environment
just some natural molecules like water and carbon
dioxide. Biodegradation rate may depend strongly on
product thickness and geometry. For instance, thin
films can degrade quickly, while plates or food
containers may need even one year [8]. In general,
biodegradable plastics can be grouped in three main
categories and several subcategories [9, 10]:
1

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Aliphatic polyester- and co-polyester-based

bio-plastics: petrochemical feedstock materials,
agricultural feedstock materials and microbial
synthesis materials;
Natural polymer-based bio-plastics: starch and
starch derivatives (starch esters), cellulose and
cellulose esters, proteins, other polysaccharides
and amino acids;
Blends, alloys and graft copolymers of natural
polymers and polyesters.

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Besides biocompatibility, manufacturability and

mechanical properties also are very important in
deciding whether a new polymer should be used or
not in large scale industrial applications. In fact, the
plastic material might require ad hoc technological
processes. Similarly, mechanical strength and loadcarrying capability should be compatible with the
planned utilisation of the polymer. In general, manufacturing and mechanical properties depend on the
chemical composition of the plastic material.
Numerous studies published in literature have
attempted to clarify these relationships. Mechanical
strength changes with the amount of biodegradable
filler utilised in the formula and depends on the
adhesion between filler and base polymer [1115].
However, experimental data on mechanical behaviour are highly dispersed because of the large variety
in biodegradable formulae. Raquez et al. [16] have
recently reported of the interest of many industrial
companies in finding a compromise between good
mechanical properties, high biodegradability and low
manufacturing costs. The real challenge is to enrich
the basic polymer structure by adding natural elements such as starch yet utilising technologies currently adopted for aliphaticaromatic additives.
This paper investigates on a new fully biodegradable material made of aliphaticaromatic synthetic
polyesters. Results of microbiological tests that demonstrate the full biodegradability of the new material
are presented. The base formula is comprised of
polyester prepared with ethylene glycol and dicarboxylic acids (i.e. succinic, sebacic and adipic). Aliphaticaromatic copolyesters containing aromatic
units on the backbone of the polymer (Figure 1) have
recently been developed for film applications. Long
aromatic blocks in polyester chains may greatly
retard the process of biodegradation. This happens,
for example, in the case of polyethylene terephthalate (PET). However, random additions of a small
fraction of aromatics into the backbone of a
predominantly aliphatic structure facilitate biodegradation and contribute to improve material properties [17]. For this reason, the aforementioned class of
polyesters is often considered the best answer to the
demand of having a completely biodegradable plastic

Figure 1: Chemical structure of the aliphaticaromatic

co-polyester

216

material yet possessing excellent mechanical

properties close to those of traditional plastics like
PET. Compatible blends can be obtained at rather low
cost by dispersing thermoplastic starch in a continuous matrix of polyester [18]. For example, the new
material analyzed in this paper can be blended with
amid, glycols, minerals, masterbatches, etc.
As the new material analysed in this study is derived
from other materials commercially available but is
fully biodegradable, it might be attractive to use thin
films of the new material in packaging, waste collection, agriculture, medical or/and sanitary applications. For this reason, it is attempted in this research to
produce the compound with the currently available
extrusion technologies and to blow thin films using
the present technological processes. Manufacturability tests are conducted on five material compositions obtained by mixing different volume fractions
(i.e. 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% of 100%) of biodegradable
with low density polyethylene (LDPE). The 0% fraction corresponds to LDPE while the 100% fraction
corresponds to the fully biodegradable material.
Manufacturing parameters must be carefully controlled to produce very thin films (i.e. 3070 lm thick)
with good mechanical properties. The use of biodegradable films is preferable over the recycling of
traditional plastic films because it is very complicated
to collect waste films and because traditional plastic
films show a fairly high size to weight ratio [19].
There is another basic question which should be
addressed each time a new material is to be tested:
which will be the constitutive behaviour most
likely followed by the material? In this case, as the
biodegradable component is progressively mixed
with LDPE to finally obtain the fully biodegradable
formula, it is reasonable to expect that the constitutive behaviour of the new material may be
somehow similar to that exhibited by LDPE. In
general, mechanical behaviour of LDPE depends
strongly on working temperature and strain rate
[2022]. Brittle, elasticplastic or hyperelastic constitutive models can be respectively adopted as
temperature increases. Visco-elasticity or viscohyperelasticity can be used to correct the abovementioned models to properly account for the
effect of strain rate. At room temperature, there is a
considerably large plastic phase with unrecoverable
deformations before failure. It is expected that the
difference in mechanical behaviour between the
new biodegradable material and the traditional
LDPE films become more and more significant as
the volume fraction of biodegradable component
increases. Such a behaviour is consistent with other
studies reported in literature [23].

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It is worthy noting that, in spite of the potentially

great benefits deriving from the use of biodegradable
thin films, only physic-chemical properties of biodegradable polymers are standardised. As there are no
official standards on mechanical testing of biodegradable polymers, codification of tensile properties
possessed by this class of materials can be referred to
ASTM and ISO standards on thin plastic films [24,
25]. Uniaxial tension tests are carried out for each
material composition to determine the tensile
modulus E, the value of stress ru and the value of
deformation u at failure. Specimen preparation and
testing protocols follow standards [24, 25]. To obtain
statistically significant results, eight specimens are
tested for each composition: hence, the total number
of mechanical tests carried out in this research is 40.
Degradation of film mechanical properties with
time is also an important question. For this reason,
the tensile tests are not carried out immediately after
film production but are distributed over a period of
about 2 months.

Material Testing: Manufacturability and

Biodegradability
The fabrication process of the new material is
described in Figure 2. The different components
constituting the formula are mixed mechanically.

This mixture is extruded and filaments of material are

obtained. The filaments are cut to obtain a granular
compound. The compound is blown by a nozzle
inflating cold air. The result of this operation is the
formation of a continuous film of plastic material
which is extruded vertically: the plastic film encloses
a cylindrical surface whose diameter depends on the
quantity of inflated air. The film is guided by a
vertical guide. For low mass density polymers, the
transverse section of the inflated cylinder becomes
larger in the bottom part; conversely, in the case of
high mass density polymers, a balloon may form in
the top part of the blown cylinder. The blown
cylinder of plastic material passes through counterrotating rollers and is transformed into a film sheet of
the desired thickness. The thickness and width of the
film are then controlled before rolling up the finite
product.
It is worthy noting that in this case no chemical
reactions were needed to execute the compounding
process. A Bandera 2B 105 co-rotating double-screw
extruder (Luigi Bandera s.p.a, Busto Arsizio, Italy)
including a masticating group has been used for this
purpose. The rotation speed of the extruder is less
than 100 r.p.m. to allow the complete mixing of the
different components of the compound. Following
the principle of the plasticating extrusion process,
the polymer entered in the extruder at the solid state
and went out at the fluid state: the base material is

Figure 2: Schematic of production process of the biodegradable thin film

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melt in the extruder thus building a new plasticated

material from several non-plastic materials [26]. The
plastic films have been produced by a TECOM EXK
5030 (Tecom s.r.l., Olgiate Olona, Italy) machine.
There are two critical phases in the production
process of the biodegradable film: the compounding/
extrusion operation and the blow-moulding operation. For this reason, the entire technological process
has been optimised to utilise also for the biodegradable material the currently available technology and
equipment typically used for producing LDPE films.
As far as it concerns the extrusion operation, the
amount of gap between the co-rotating screws and
the amount of gap between the screws and the
extruder walls have been modified. The mixing
process has been designed taking care to avoid
stagnations that may lead to local accumulations of
some phase in the material structure. By changing
continuously the orientation of the fillets of fluid
material, a complete and uniform distribution of the
biodegradable additive throughout the compound
structure could be achieved.
Figure 3 shows the extruded compounds finally
obtained for the fully biodegradable material and the
low density polyethylene. It can be seen that the new
material is opaque while LDPE is transparent. The
new formula seems to possess very good external
properties (translucency/opaqueness/limpidity, sur(A)

(B)

Figure 3: Extruded compounds obtained in the experiments:

(A) 100% biodegradable material; (B) low density polyethylene

218

face appearance, tactile sensation, etc.). The mass

density of the fully biodegradable material is slightly
higher than 1000 kg m)3; therefore, the new material
is heavier than LDPE whose mass density is about
920 kg m)3.
The information on mass density turned extremely
useful in evaluating the overall efficiency of the blowmoulding operation. For that purpose, the shape
taken by the cylinder of plastic material blown by
cold air has been analysed (Figure 4). In fact, it was
attempted at first to use directly the process parameters relative to LDPE also for the fully biodegradable
material. However, this approach failed because the
manufactured films included a considerable amount
of impurities and pores. Furthermore, the shape
taken by the plastic film that was observed for the
100% biodegradable material turned to be similar to
the typical shape observed in the case of LDPE. The
diameter of the inflated cylinder changed sharply
and a balloon was localised in the bottom part of the
cylinder: that is, near the nozzle from which the
plastic material is blown (Figure 4A). This fact was in
open contrast with the expected behaviour for polymers of high mass density such as the 100% biodegradable material: the balloon should have been
localised near the counter-rotating rollers.
For the above-mentioned reasons, a step by step
process has been followed by increasing progressively
the volume fraction of biodegradable from 25 to
100%. For each new composition tested in the
experiments, temperature and pressure distributions
have been monitored in the different segments of the
extruder and then modified to obtain the right
shape of surface limited by the plastic film, consistent
with the value of mass density of the blown compound (Figure 4B). As distributions of temperature
and pressure in the extruder were obviously known
for the production process of LDPE, they could be
used as reference values for determining the new
process parameters for each fraction of biodegradable
included in the formula. This process has been
repeated until the fully biodegradable material could
be produced without problems. Process parameters
such as temperature and pressure distributions in the
different segments of the extruder have hence been
monitored for the following five products: 0%
biodegradable (LDPE); 25% biodegradable; 50% biodegradable; 75% biodegradable; 100% biodegradable
(new material).
In summary, technological tests have indicated
that the equipments and the technological processes
currently available in the plastics industry can be
utilised to produce thin films of the new biodegradable material studied in this research. The film can be

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(A)

(B)

Figure 4: (A) Balloon formed near the nozzle when it was attempted to produce the 100% biodegradable film with the same process
parameters used for LDPE; (B) fully biodegradable film obtained after setting properly the blow-moulding process parameters

produced rather easily, modifying just marginally the

standard blow-moulding process. Remarkably, processing the new material does not entail additional
costs with respect to traditional LDPE.
As mentioned in the Introduction section, the new
material is comprised polyester prepared with ethylene glycol and dicarboxylic acids (i.e. succinic, sebacic and adipic). Random additions of a small fraction
of aromatics are added into the backbone of the
predominantly aliphatic structure to improve
mechanical properties. The films of 100% biodegradable material have been submitted to microbiological tests to verify the degree of biodegradability
and compostability according to the international
standards ISO 14855 [27] and EN 13432 [28] adopted
in the current Italian regulation. Figure 5 shows the
different phases of the biodegradation process
undergone by a thin film subject to the attack of
colonies of mixed spores. The microbiological test
has been carried out at 25 C. Images have been
recorded with a scanning electron microscope. The
original structure of the film is shown in Figure 5A.
The situations after 15 and 20 days of exposure are
respectively shown in Figure 5B,C. The degradation
starts near grains and rapidly spreads throughout the
material structure. It can be seen from Figure 5D that
the process of bio-degradation has been completed
after 40 days of exposure to micro-organisms. The

original structure has been destroyed by the spore

colonies. The surface of the film is no longer smooth
and now includes several wrinkles shaped irregularly.
The residual grains became very small in size (few
tens of microns). Based on these observations, the
material can be considered fully biodegradable and
compostable.

Mechanical Testing
The mechanical behaviour of the biodegradable films
has been investigated by carrying out uniaxial tensile
tests. Films have been provided by the industrial
partner (operating in the Southern part of Italy)
involved in this research. Table 1 reports, for each
volume fraction of biodegradable component
included in the formula, the number of tested specimens and the corresponding main geometric
dimensions, selected according to ASTM [24]. All
specimens have been obtained by cutting the thin
film along the direction of extrusion (i.e. the longitudinal direction). Razor blades are utilised to cut
specimens with a great deal of accuracy without
generating pre-stresses in the material or producing
inconsistent specimen edges [25].
Figure 6 shows a top view of the specimen geometry: the specimen is shaped as a rectangle of total

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Mechanical Behaviour of New Biodegradable Film : C. Casavola et al.

(A)

(B)

(C)

(D)

Figure 5: SEM micrographs (500) of the evolution of biodegradation process of the thin film exposed to the attack of mixed spore
colonies: (A) no exposure; (B) 15th day of exposure; (C) 20th day of exposure; (D) final degradation after 40 days of exposure

Table 1: Plan of the mechanical tests

Per cent fraction of
biodegradable material

Number of
tested
specimens

Total length
LTOT (mm)

Width
w (mm)

Thickness
t (mm)

Nominal
cross section
Ao (mm2)

0 (LDPE)

170

15

0.065

0.975

25

170

15

0.065

0.975

50

170

15

0.070

1.050

75

170

15

0.070

1.050

100 (fully biodegradable)

170

15

0.070

1.050

length LTOT and width w. The calibrated length Lo

with respect to which engineering strains are computed is 50 mm and is also indicated in the figure.
The length Lo is limited by two circular marks of

Lo
L TOT
Figure 6: Schematic of tested specimens (dimensions are in
mm) (Lo is the gauge length for video-extensometer measurements)

220

carried out in the research

diameter 2 mm which are the target points of the

video-extensometer used for monitoring the specimen elongation produced by the tensile load.
It can be seen from Table 1 that the specimen
thickness t is not the same for all of the tested films
but increased slightly with the fraction of biodegradable added to the formula. The value of thickness
considered for each material composition ensured
the best performance of the production process in
terms of film quality: the surface of the film is uniform, smooth and without wrinkles, absence of
defects and pores in the material, etc. As thickness
values were controlled in the manufacturing process,
the standard deviation on this quantity is not

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indicated in the table because does not have engineering significance.

All measurements have been performed practically
at room temperature (25 C). Therefore, deformations induced by thermal distortion effects are negligible. No special cares were taken to limit the
exposure of the polymer to light. The level of
humidity of the laboratory environment where
specimens were stored and experimental tests were
carried out has not been controlled in a systematic
fashion but never went above 35%.
Mechanical tests have been carried out with a
Lloyd LR5K (Lloyd Instruments, Segensworth East,
UK) testing machine equipped with a 0.1 kN load
cell. The machine worked in the positioning control
mode and the nominal displacement rate was equal
to 10 mm min)1 as prescribed [25] for materials with
per cent elongation at break greater than 100. Film
specimens have been mounted into grips actuated by
compressed air. Special cares have been taken to
prevent stress concentrations near specimen fixtures
and to avoid relative motions between specimens
and grips. For that purpose, the region of contact
between film and grips was large enough to transfer
uniformly the load. Furthermore, grips were accurately lined up to avoid parasitic bending and transverse compression effects.
The deformations of tested films have been measured with a standard video-extensometer supplied
by Instron Inc (Norwood, MA, USA). The same
instrument has been utilised to check the correct
mounting of the specimens in the loading frame. For
that purpose, the effective length of the calibrated
segment L0o has been compared with the nominal
value Lo prior to applying any load. The specimen
was re-mounted onto the testing machine if the per
cent difference between L0o and Lo exceeded the limit
of resolution of the video-extensometer.
The extensometer field of view is 500 mm, hence
large enough to monitor the amount of elongation at
break expected for the tested specimens. Data on low
density and high density polyethylene blends
reported in literature indicate that the elongation at
break, at room temperature, ranges between 150 and
800% based on the blend composition [20, 23, 29,
30]. This means that the expected maximum distance
between the target points sketched in Figure 6 is
450 mm, which is well inside the measure range of
the extensometer used in this research.
Some preliminary tests have been performed on
sacrificial specimens to choose the marking type
more suited for the present experiments. A white pen
with a soft tip has been utilised; the type of mark is
the solid circularly shaped one, with a diameter of

2 mm. All tests have been executed immediately after

the marking operations to avoid possible degradation
of the specimen because of the solvent comprised in
the ink. All specimens broke in the central region
limited by the markers. High contrast image patterns
have been recorded in all experiments.
Data on tensile modulus in the linearly elastic
regime, true stress at failure ru and true deformation
at failure u gathered for each material composition
tested are relative to those specimens for which failure occurred in the centre of the calibrated segment.
Mechanical rupture near grips has been observed
only for a limited number of specimens: one specimen for each material composition.
All specimens have been cut from the different
blends immediately after these were produced.
However, to account for the possible degradation of
mechanical properties with time, the tensile tests
have been distributed over a period of about
2 months. The 40 specimens tested in the experimental campaign have been divided in five sets each
of which corresponds to a given volume fraction of
the biodegradable component mixed with LDPE (i.e.
0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%). As one specimen per
each set has been tested in the same week, five tensile
tests have been carried out each week. The testing of
each single set of specimens has been instead completed in 8 weeks.
Stressstrain curves can be expressed in terms of
engineering quantities. In such a case, the tensile
force F applied to the specimen and sensed by the
load cell is divided by the nominal cross-sectional
area Ao of the specimen to compute the nominal
stress r developed in the material. That is:
r

F
F

Ao w  t

(1)

The nominal deformation e undergone by the

specimen can be computed by dividing the variation
in calibrated length (L ) Lo) measured with the video-extensometer by the nominal calibrated length
L o:
e

L  Lo
Lo

(2)

However, engineering strains and stresses describe

only the initial phases of the tensile test where
mechanical behaviour is linear or at least quasi-linear. For this reason, experimental data have been
expressed in terms of true stress and stretch ratio
values to fully understand test results. For the largedeformation regime, the stretch ratio k can be computed as:

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Table 2: Failure stretch ratio and

Per cent fraction of
biodegradable material

Tensile
modulus
(MPa)

Stretch ratio
at failure ku

Tensile strength
ru (true stress)
(MPa)

0 (LDPE)

112.9 3.63

3.654 0.093

57.53 2.814

25

115.6 4.57

3.579 0.301

63.32 4.295

50

117.5 5.26

5.082 0.537

104.9 8.182

75

76.7 6.45

6.417 0.337

118.2 8.535

100 (fully biodegradable)

76.3 5.81

7.920 0.438

226.9 21.78

k 1 e

(3)

Under the assumption of material incompressibility, the true stress rr developed in the material can be
computed as:
rr r1 e

(4)

Table 2 summarises the results obtained in the

experimental tests. For each material formula, the
values of stretch ratio at failure ku and true stress at
failure ru are listed. As the tested films did not exhibit
significant necking in correspondence of failure, the
true stress at failure ru has been computed, recalling
Equations (1), (3) and (4), as:
ru

Fu
 ku
Ao

(5)

where Fu is the nominal load applied at failure.

Besides parameters evaluated at failure, the tensile
modulus E evaluated in the linearly elastic regime is
also reported in Table 2. For each quantity, the table
shows the values averaged over the different experimental tests and the corresponding standard deviations. The data listed in the table are consistent with
values indicated in literature for polyethylene blends
[20, 23, 29, 30] although those reference values are
highly dispersed because of the wide variety of
combinations between material compositions and
testing conditions analyzed in literature.
It can be seen from Table 2 that while ku increased
by about 120% (i.e. from 3.654 to 7.920) with respect
to LDPE, the true strength ru of the fully biodegradable material is about four times higher than LDPE
(i.e. 226.9 MPa versus 57.53 MPa). The load carrying
capability of the film increased significantly if the
fraction in volume of biodegradable component is at
least 50%.
The tensile modulus increased by about 4% with
respect to LDPE for fractions of biodegradable up to
50% and decreased sharply (i.e. by more than 30%)
for the most biodegradable films. Values in Table 2
are computed through linear fitting of the stress

222

strength observed for different fractions

of biodegradable material

strain curves in the range of small deformation where

it holds R2 = 0.999. The ratio between standard
deviation and average modulus was about 3% for
blends with less than 50% of biodegradable but raised
to 8.5% for the other films.
The statistical dispersion of failure parameters is
very limited for the LDPE specimens: 2.5% on ku and
4.5% on ru. The standard deviation on ru increased
progressively becoming maximum for the fully biodegradable material while the maximum standard
deviation on ku was seen for the 50% biodegradable
formula. However, the ratio of standard deviations to
averaged values never went above 10% for both ku
and ru: this amount of dispersion can be considered
acceptable also in view of the complications that may
occur in testing very thin films like those analysed in
this research. Factors as polymer degradation with
time, exposure to light, temperature and humidity
did not play a significant role at least during the
2 months covered by this experimental campaign. In
fact, the values of ku and ru measured for each set of
specimens changed randomly over the testing period
without increasing or decreasing monotonically as
the experimental campaign progressed (see plots in
Figure 7).
Tensile strength values in terms of true stress are
plotted in Figure 8 versus the fraction of biodegradable in the formula. Average values are fitted fairly
well by a quadratic curve. The largest difference
between measures and fitting is less than 15% and
occurred for fractions of biodegradable of 50% and
75%. More information can be gathered from the
plots of lower and upper limits of the data band.
These curves are built by subtracting or adding the
standard deviations listed in Table 2 to the corresponding average values. Quadratic trend lines yield
again a correlation of about 95%. However, the
strength values measured for the blends with 50%
and 75% fraction of biodegradable fall outside the
data band.
Figure 9 shows the curves of true stress versus
stretch ratio observed for each formula. The constitutive behaviour is strongly sensitive to the fraction of
biodegradable component added into the formula.

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9
8

Stretch ratio at failure

7
6
5
4
3
0% (LDPE)
25%
50%
75%
100%

2
1
0
0

Number of experimental test

Tensile strength (true stress) [MPa]

300

250

200

150

100

50
0% (LDPE)

25%

50%

75%

100%

0
0

Number of experimental test

Figure 7: Results of mechanical tests carried out for different film compositions

Each plot shown in the figure can be divided in four

macro-phases: a pseudo-linearly elastic region; the
rollover to flow; a steady increase in stress with strain;
a dramatic increase in stress at very large strains. The
tested material is very similar to LDPE if the biodegradable fraction included in the formula is up to
25%. Increasing the biodegradable fraction to 50%
does not change much the overall constitutive trend
but results in much larger deformations at failure.
When the fraction of biodegradable ranges between
50 and 75%, the constitutive law shows a reduction
in hardening/stiffening modulus with respect to the
blends with less biodegradable fraction. In addition,
the phase of dramatic hardening before failure

becomes clearly visible and starts already in correspondence of k = 2. The fully biodegradable film has
a constitutive behaviour completely different from
LDPE as it can undergo much larger deformations
(i.e. about 700% versus 265% elongation) at a nominal specific load two times higher (i.e. about 30 MPa
versus 15 MPa).
The differences in constitutive behaviour observed
in the experimental campaign can be explained with
the fact that the mass density of the biodegradable
material is higher than that of LDPE. The tensile
modulus of the fully biodegradable material is lower
than that of LDPE (76.3 MPa versus 112.9 MPa).
This resulted in a reduction of the yield stress of the

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260
240
Upper limit

Tensile strength (true stress) [MPa]

220

Average

200

Lower limit

180

u = 0.0226v2 0.5135v + 64.315

R 2 = 0.9512

160
140
120
100
80
u = 0.018v 2 0.3939v + 57.228

60

R 2 = 0.9574

40
20
0
0

10

20

30
40
50
60
70
Fraction of biodegradable material (%)

80

90

100

Figure 8: Trend lines of true tensile strength with respect to volume fraction of biodegradable

Figure 9: Stressstretch ratio curves obtained for different fractions of biodegradable component

biodegradable polymer (from the Consideres construction, it may estimated that the yield limit is
reduced by 50% and 66% for the 75% and 100%
biodegradable blends, respectively, compared with
that of LDPE). However, the load-carrying capability
at large strains became close to that of high density

224

polyethylene (HDPE). The blend with 50% biodegradable fraction presents an excellent balance
between load-carrying capability at large strains
(almost 50% more than LDPE) and tensile modulus
at small strains which is practically the same as for
LDPE.

 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation  2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

j Strain (2010) 46, 215226

C. Casavola et al. : Mechanical Behaviour of New Biodegradable Film

Discussion and Conclusions

This paper studied a new fully biodegradable plastic
material recently developed. The new material is
comprised of an aliphaticaromatic biodegradable
component dispersed into a polyester matrix. The
objective of the research was threefold: (i) to verify the
possibility of using currently available equipments
and technologies to manufacture thin films of the new
material; (ii) to check if the thin films thus produced
are fully biodegradable and compostable; (iii) to assess
the mechanical behaviour of the new material.
Five different material compositions ranging from 0
(LDPE) to 100% fraction of biodegradable were considered to tune the process parameters until fully
biodegradable films could be produced using currently
available technologies and standard equipments. This
goal was accomplished with very little effort in terms
of modifications in production processes and no
additional costs. This result is very important in view
of the fact that thin films are mostly used for food
packaging and waste collections and recycling of nonbiodegradable films is a very cumbersome task.
Although the new formula derives from materials
that are already in commerce but are not fully biodegradable, micro-biological tests, carried out
according to international standards, demonstrated
clearly that the new material is fully biodegradable
and compostable.
The extensive experimental campaign carried out
on 40 specimens subject to tensile loading proved that
the fully biodegradable material possesses better
mechanical properties than LDPE in terms of loadcarrying capability. In particular, the new material can
undergo much higher stresses and larger strains before
failure. Therefore, the mechanical response of the
100% biodegradable formula is close to HDPE. In view
of this, the new material can be efficiently utilised
either in cases where tensile modulus and strength are
critical (for instance, in trash bags, merchandise bags
and grocery sacks which must have sufficient stiffness
to prevent stretching as a result of the weight added)
and in cases where extensibility is very important (for
instance, plastic films used for pallet wrapping are
stretched up to 300% of their original length).
Finally, mechanical properties did not change significantly over a period of about 2 months after the
production of the tested films although no special
cares on storage and testing conditions (exposure to
light, temperature, humidity, etc.) were taken. However, these aspects will have to be analysed in much
more detail in the near future.
In conclusion, the new material studied in this
research seems to have several strength points. In the

first place, it is fully biodegradable and compostable.

Second, constraints on technological processes,
requirements on production equipments and manufacturing costs are similar to those of LDPE. Furthermore, compounding technology is similar to that
used for traditional materials. Therefore, the new
material can cover a wide field of industrial applications (blown films, injection moulding, etc.). Finally,
mechanical properties are very good compared with
standard non-biodegradable polymers currently utilised such as LDPE and HDPE. All these facts seem to
give to this material the potentiality of becoming a
good substitute of polyethylenes in a reasonably near
future.

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