Statistical and Experimental Analysis of the Mechanical Properties of Flax Fibers

Abstract

In this paper, 400 flax fibers with 10 different lengths (40 fibers at each length) are experimentally characterized (quasi-static tensile behavior) and then the results are statistically analyzed. The quasi-static tensile test results appeared to have a large dispersion, which makes it possible to measure the degree of variability in the ultimate tensile strength (UTS), failure strain, and the Young’s modulus of the fiber, at different gage lengths (10 mm to 500 mm). The variation in mechanical properties at each fiber length is established using two and three Weibull statistics based on maximum likelihood estimation (ML) and least square estimation (LS). Finally, all 10 groups for each tensile property are analyzed by one-way (ANOVA).