Predicting mechanical performance of starch-based foam materials

Variations in mixture proportions of plasticizers, additives, and crosslinking agents have significant impacts on mechanical performance of starch-based foam materials. In particular, starch/ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) foam materials have been developed with improved mechanical strength by optimizing the formulation. There is a lack of numerical correlations that could help analyze the effects of components and provide a predictive method for future research. In this study, we develop simple and accurate predictions for tensile strength and resilience based on mixture proportions of components for starch-based/EVA foam materials. The models constructed might be used to help design mixture proportions of starch-based foam materials. By combining optimization results from the Taguchi method and machine learning approaches, it is expected that more quantitative data can be extracted from fewer experimental trials at the same time.