Development of a test device for measuring tensile properties of fabrics

Abstract

A tensile tester for textile materials has been designed, manufactured and its performance tested. Horizontal construction is preferred in the design. Servo motor and ballscrew drive is used in the drive of movable clamp and elongation of test sample is calculated from servo motor motion and gear-ballscrew kinematics. Tension is measured by load cells of different measuring intervals. Software routines have been developed for different tests including load-elongation (or stress-strain) curve, tension change under constant elongation, creep test and force and elongation lost under cyclic loading. It is shown that load-elongation curves obtained from the developed device and Instron 4301 are close to each other. But some deviations exist. This is taught to be due to the bending in the movable clamp and mechanical imperfections. With the improvement of rigidity of the device and mechanical imperfections, the device is expected to give test results of commercially available ones in the market.