R E S E A R C H METHODS

Modern Requirements Emphasize

The Importance of

Impact Testing of Textiles

By HERBERT LEADERMAN
1

A CONSIDERATION of the mechanical behavior of textile

materials reveals that there is great need for a rational,
impartial test of the behavior of textiles when subjected
to shock loads.
Mechanical tests are made on materials for two pur-
poses. The tests may be standard commercial tests to
determine whether a given material possesses certain
specified properties as shown by these tests, or they may
be special tests to evaluate new materials or new appli-
cations of existing materials. In the first case it is
merely necessary that there be some correlation between
the behavior in the tests and service behavior. In the
latter case the tests should represent, but not necessarily
imitate, service conditions. A test should be so designed
that it is impartial, that is, it should not be influenced by
the peculiarities of the design of the machine or by irre- ’
levant characteristics of the material being tested.
The most common type of mechanical test is the ten-
sile test, in which the tensile load to break the specimen
is measured, and sometimes the elongation at rupture
also. In commercial testing machines the load is applied
fairly slowly, the time to rupture usually being of the
order of one minute. In practice, textiles and plastics
rarely fail due to a load gradually applied in this man-
ner ; for example, tire-cords are subjected to fluctuating
stresses at elevated temperatures, while the fabric of a

1 Appreciation is expressed to Professor A. V. deForest for invaluable

suggestions and advice.

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parachute canopy is subjected on opening to an explo-
sive shock load due to the inertia of the fabric itself.
There is no justification for evaluating the fatigue be-
havior of a tire-cord or the resistance to shock load of a
parachute fabric by means of the usual standard tensile
tests, and service tests are likely to be tedious, expensive
and eventually uncertain due to the presence of extrane-
ous uncontrollable factors.
Busse and his associates [1] have emphasized that
for a better evaluation of the behavior of textile ma-
terials under real conditions, it is necessary to develop
special testing procedures. An example of a special test-
ing machine is the &dquo;fatigue&dquo; apparatus discussed by
these workers, in which a tire cord is subjected, at an ele-
vated temperature, to a static load upon which is super-
imposed an alternating load.
An impact test on a textile material is essentially a
tensile test carried out at a very rapid rate. Until re-
cently, it has not been possible to measure with cer-
tainty [2] the breaking load of a yarn at very rapid rates
of loading. We can however get some idea of the be-
havior under impact by the study of data on &dquo;static en-
durance.&dquo; In the work referred to above [1], weights
were hung from cotton cords, and the time required for
the cords to break when under constant load was observed
as a function of load. It was found, for example, that
for a &dquo;life&dquo; of one minute, the strength of a cord was
11.4 pounds. If it is permissible to extrapolate these
data to very short durations of time under load, it ap-
pears that for &dquo;life&dquo; of 0.006 second the cord could
carry a load of 17.8 pounds; in other words, the strength
of the cord under impact conditions should be much
greater than that measured in the usual testing machine.
An earlier series of investigations by Peirce [2] on the
&dquo;strength&dquo; of 36’s Sakel yarn included long-duration
static endurance tests under constant load, medium-dura-
tion tests on single yarns, and ballistic (impact) tests.
The strength as measured in the first two procedures and
estimated in the third was found to vary greatly with
2
Figures in brackets refer to the literature references at the end of
this paper.

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 Fig. 1. Inclined plane
machine for testing
tensile strength, elon-
gation, and elasticity.

the time required

to break the yarn.
From the results
of Peirce’s work it
appears t h a t the
strength of the
yarn, which was 323
grams when t h e
time to break was
one minute, was

augmented to about
463 grams when the
time to break was equal to 0.006 second. The breaking
load was in this case again very much greater under im-
pact loading, though the extension at rupture was found
to be virtually independent of the time to break.

Impact Testers for Textiles and Metals

A specification can very easily be written for an
ideal impact tester for textiles. First, the loading con-
ditions must be such that they have no effect on the meas-
ured characteristics of the specimen. As we shall see,
this requires that the deformation be applied at a rate
which is uniform with time, and independent of the na-
ture of the specimen. Second, this machine should meas-
ure at least the breaking load, and if possible the exten-
sion at break also. Finally, for research purposes it is
an advantage to obtain the stress-strain curve under im-

pact conditions. It is possible to do this by combining

the essential features of impact machines described in
the literature, namely, the constant-velocity device first
used in the Mann machine [3], and the tension-time re-
corder of Clark and Datwyler [4].
Limitations of existing types of impact testers for
the purposes of textile testing can best be illustrated by

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consideration of some of the testers which have been
used for metals and textiles. Impact testers are usually
classified into three types [5 ] : pendulum type; vertical
type (with freely falling weight) ; and rotating disc type.
An alternative classification would be: constant velocity
of deformation type; variable velocity of deformation
type; and zero velocity of rupture type. There are thus
nine possibilities of which one-freely falling weight with
constant velocity of deformation-is best for textiles.
In the pendulum type tester the pendulum-most of
the mass of which. is concentrated in the bob-is deflected
through a given angle and released. The specimen is
ruptured by a blow applied at the center of percussion
when the pendulum is at or near the vertical position.
The angle to which the pendulum swings after rupturing
the specimen is measured. By comparing this angle
with the corresponding angle obtained when there is no
specimen in the machine, the energy required to break
the specimen at a rapid rate can be computed. The ve-
locity at which the deformation commences is given by
the initial position of the pendulum, which is usually con-
stant in most commercial machines. The velocity at
which rupture takes place is given approximately by the
angle to which the pendulum swings after the blow. In
most arrangements the velocity of deformation decreases
during the deformation of the specimen, and the velocity
at which rupture takes place depends on the energy ab-
sorbed by the specimen.
Pendulum type testers for the tensile testing of tex-
tiles have been described by Lester [6] ; Balls [7] ; Den-
ham and Brash [8] ; and Midgley and Peirce [9] (see Fig.
2). Attachments to a pendulum tester to measure break-
ing load, extension at break, and the load-extension curve,
have been described by Peirce[2]. Kragelsky [10] has
discussed testers for bast fibers. The first three re-
ferred to were interested not so much in studying the
behavior of materials under shock load as in obtaining
a simple measure of quality which would take into ac-
count both breaking strength and elongation. Midgley
and Peirce appear to have been the first to point out that,

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Fig. 2. Pendulum or ballistic type of tester, described by Midgley
and Peirce.

since the strength of

textile material increases con-
a

siderably with rate of loading, ballistic tests should be

used for materials to be subjected to shock loads. Den-
ham and Brash, and also Midgley and Peirce observed
that the energy required to rupture a specimen depended
on the velocity at rupture. The latter partially elimi-
nated this factor by varying the initial deflection of the
pendulum, so that the angle of swing of the pendulum,
after rupture of the specimen, was approximately con-
stant. It is clear that in the ideal type of impact tester
for textiles the velocity of deformation should be con-
stant and independent of the nature of the specimen.
In the falling-weight type of impact tester, variable-
velocity and zero velocity of deformation types have been
built. In the former arrangement a weight falls f rom a
given height on to the specimen; the energy required to
break the specimen is obtained by measuring the kinetic
energy remaining in the weight after the instant of rup-
ture. In the Hatt-Turner machine, used in the testing
of wood, the height is measured to which the weight must
be raised in order just to break the specimen. The ve-
locity of def ormation at the instant of rupture is thus
zero, and the time under load is therefore greater for
materials which possess a greater deformation at rup-

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 ture. Brittle specimens are thus broken more rapidly
than ductile specimens, and are therefore unduly favored.
This arrangement is consequently not an impartial one.
An exactly similar arrangement may be used for testing
textile materials in tension. One end of the specimen-
say a yarn-is fixed, and the other end, to which a
.
weight is attached, is raised above the fixed end and the
weight released. The minimum height to which the
weight must be raised in order just to break the specimen
is observed, as in the previous case.
The rotating-drum machine of Mann [3], represents
a new departure in impact testing. In this case the
energy to break the specimen is supplied by a heavy ro-
tating drum. The angular kinetic energy of the drum
is so large that it is negligibly decreased on breaking the
specimen. The specimen is attached to the frame of the
machine through a mechanical measuring device which, it
is stated, measures the energy required to break the
specimen.
The arrangements which have so far been described
suffer from the limitation that it is possible to meas-
ure only an energy, which is mainly the energy to rup-
ture the specimen, but which includes also energy
dissipated in other ways. These machines cannot dif-
ferentiate between a strong material possessing little
extensibility, and a weak material possessing a large ex-
tensibility. Peirce [2] pointed out that mechanical de-
vices to measure breaking load and extension as well as
the load-extension curve in an impact machine are limited
in accuracy. In order to measure these characteristics
we have to use electrical methods, which are especially
suited to the measurement of transient stress phenomena.
Electrical Measurement of Tension
The measurement of tension by the electrical method
of Clark and Datwyler is shown in Fig. 3. The bar B
is attached to one end of the specimen, the other end of
which is attached through the &dquo;weigh-bar&dquo; C to the frame
of the apparatus D. For an impact test this arrangement
is set in the base of pendulum impact machine. The bob
of the pendulum strikes the bar B, and in so doing rup-
tures the specimen in tension. The weigh-bar C is so

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designed that its elastic limit is not exceeded while the
specimen A is being extended to rupture. The weigh-bar
is wound longitudinally with a fine wire. When the speci-
men is extended to rupture, the wire is stretched elas-

tically, and hence its electrical resistance increases in pro-

portion to the strain of the weigh-bar.

~ .. ~-.

Fig. 3. Weigh-bar principle as used by Clark and Datwyler

(with pendulum tester).
A. Specimen under test.
B. Impact bar (struck by pendulum).
C. Wire-wound &dquo;pick-up &dquo; or &dquo;weigh-bar. &dquo;
D. Frame of machine.

If the
weigh-bar or &dquo;pick-up&dquo; is connected to a suit-
able input circuit, as used by Clark and Datwyler, this
resistance change can be transformed into a voltage
change, which in turn can be amplified and fed into a
cathode-ray oscilloscope. Thus the deflection of the os-
cilloscope trace is proportional to the instantaneous ten-
sion in the specimen. We can now obtain a tension-time
curve using a single-sweep oscilloscope, or better still, a

constant-speed rotating drum camera.

It should be emphasized that this arrangement, under
the correct mechanical and electrical conditions, gives a
record on photographic film of the tension in a tensile
impact specimen as a function of time. In the pendulum
arrangement of Clark and Datwyler the velocity of defor-
mation was not constant, and hence a calculation was nec-

essary to obtain the load-extension curve of the specimen

from the load-time record. The measurement of impact

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 stresses, using
the strain-sensi-
tive properties
of fine wires, has
since been fur-
ther developed
by Professors A.
V. deF’orest and
A. C. Ruge at the
Massachusetts
Institute of
Technology.
Vertical Constant-
velocity Ar-
rangement
In combination
with the vertical
constant-velocity
arrangement to
be described, the
electrical method
discussed previ-
ously affords a
means of meas-

uring directly
the load-exten-
sion curve of a
textile material
at a constant
rate of deforma-
tion. The ar-
rangement is
therefore simply
a constant-rate-
of-stretch tester
working at a
very high speed.
In Figure 4 the
light impact bar
B now hangs
Fig. 4. Weigh-bar principle
for falling-weight arrangement. from the textile

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specimen A, which hangs in turn from the weigh-bar C.
-

The weight W falls freely until it hits the impact bar B;

this bar is then carried downwards by the weight, and as
a consequence the specimen A is stretched to rupture.
In this arrangement it is necessary that the free fall
of the weight be as large as possible compared to the
extension of the specimen. For example, if the free fall
is 100 inches and the extension of the specimen is 4 inches,
as in Figure 4, the velocity of deformation increases 2%

during the process of deformation, if the specimen is

very weak compared to the mass of the weight. If the
breaking load of the specimen is appreciable, and if the
extension at break is less, the increase in rate of stretch
during the deformation is smaller and may even be nega-
tive. - Thus with a suitable designed arrangement the
rate of~ stretch is substantially constant. The Clark-
Datwyler scheme discussed previously thus gives not
merely the load-time curve, but also the load-extension
curve, of the specimen in the impact test.
Summary
Impacttests on textiles should be carried out prefer-
ably at a constant velocity of deformation. This can be
effected easily with the freely falling weight arrange-
ment. By means of an electrical-resistance &dquo;weigh-bar&dquo;
the tension in the specimen as a function of extension
can be obtained. In this way the yield-point, breaking
load, ultimate extension, and work to rupture under im-
pact conditions may be determined. Comparison of these
data with corresponding data obtained at constant rate of
stretch at usual testing speeds will show the effect of high
rates of stretch on the mechanical properties of textiles.
References
1. Busse, W. F., et al., J. Applied Phys., 13, 715 (1942).
2. Peirce, F. T., J. Textile Inst., 18, T481 (1927).
3. Mann, H. C., Proc. Amer. Soc. Testing Materials, 36, 85 (1936).
4. Clark, D. S., and Datwyler, G., ibidem, 38, 98 (1938) .
5. Sayre, M. F., and Werring, W. W., ibidem, 38, 21 (1938).
6. Lester, J. Textile Inst., 1, 63 (1910).
7. Balls, W. L., " Studies of Quality in Cotton," London, 1928.
8. Denham, W. S., and Brash, W., J. Textile Inst., 15, T291 (1924).
9. Midgley, E., and Peirce, F. T., ibidem, 17, T317 (1926).
"
10. Kragelsky, E. V., Physical Properties of Bast Materials," Moscow,
1937.

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