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Scatter in tensile properties of flax fibre bundles: influence of determination and calculation of the cross-sectional area

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Abstract

The scatter in tensile properties induced by the determination and calculation method of the cross-sectional area (CSA) of bast fibre bundles is almost as high as the scatter found in the literature. Different methods (light microscopy, high resolution flat-bed scanning, and laser-based fibre dimensional analysis) were applied to exactly the same flax fibre bundles prior to tensile testing, and different approaches for the calculation of the CSA were applied. The CSA method alone is introducing up to 300 % of variation in tensile strength data. These results show that there is a strong need for standards and standardisation of fibre bundle testing. Care has to be taken when comparing results from studies using slightly different methods.

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Notes

  1. The pixel size can be calculated from the scanning resolution: Pixel size in mm = 25.4 mm/inch/scanning resolution in dpi.

  2. Median (\( \tilde{x} \)) and Median Absolute Deviation (MAD) are given as distribution independent measures:

    \( {\text{MAD}} = {\text{median}}(\left| {x_{i} - \tilde{x}} \right|) \).

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the Federal Ministry of Education and Research for funding the project “FIBRAGEN—Flax for improved biomaterials through applied genomics” within the funding measure PLANT-KBBE III under the project code 0315911. Our special thanks go to Dr. Thomas Assheuer from Projektträger Jülich PTJ for his excellent support during the whole FIBRAGEN-project. We also acknowledge Yann Leray and Steve Bucknell from DiaStron Ltd. for their support and optimisations within the software. We thank Mr Erik Klebert, B.Sc. for his help with the experiments.

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  1. The Biological Materials Group, Faculty 5/Biomimetics, HSB—Hochschule Bremen, City University of Applied Sciences, Neustadtswall 30, 28199, Bremen, Germany

    Katharina Haag & Jörg Müssig

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  1. Katharina Haag
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Correspondence to Jörg Müssig.

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Haag, K., Müssig, J. Scatter in tensile properties of flax fibre bundles: influence of determination and calculation of the cross-sectional area. J Mater Sci 51, 7907–7917 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-016-0052-z

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