The
use of the Film Support Rig can provide a very useful test for
monitoring the quality of irregular objects, such as the toughness of
sliced meat. However, this test setup can also provide more fundamental
stress-strain data if the sample has a known uniform thickness and
homogeneous structure.Sometimes the properties of a thin film are under investigation, but the film might be unsuitable for any other type of testing. An example would be a film of dried nail polish; depending on its properties, this can be too brittle to clamp in tensile grips, it is too thin to test under compression and it may not be large enough for bend testing. In cases such as this, the Film Support Rig is ideal, as the sample is clamped at the edges and put under “biaxial tension” by a spherical probe pushing into the centre.
