tensile-strength-plant-fibres

Practical: Determining the Tensile Strength of Plant Fibres

• The tensile strength of a fibre refers to the maximum load it can carry before breaking

  • For example, this information would be important when determining the strength of a rope made of plant fibres

Apparatus

• Plant fibres

• Retort stand (clamp stand)

• Clamp

• Weights

Method

• The fibre should be attached to a clamp stand

• Attach a weight on the other end of the plant fibre

• Carefully continue to add one weight at a time until the fibre breaks

• Record the mass at which the fibre broke

• This represents the tensile strength

• To increase the accuracy of your results, this process should be repeated with more samples of the same plant fibre

  • These values can be used to calculate the mean tensile strength for the fibre

  • It is important to ensure that the fibres are all of the same length and that all other variables are kept constant

Apparatus used to determine the tensile strength of plant fibres