Tensile Behavior of Low Density Thermally Bonded Nonwoven Material

A discontinuous and non-uniform microstructure of alow-density thermally bonded nonwoven materialdisplays in a complicated and unstable tensilebehavior. This paper reports uniaxial tensile tests of alow density thermally bonded nonwoven toinvestigate the effect of the specimen size and shapefactor, as well as the cyclic tensile loading conditionsemployed to investigate the deformational behaviorand performance of the nonwoven at differentloading stages. The experimental data are comparedwith results of microscopic image analysis and FEmodels.