Author(s)

E. Van Nimmen, K. Gellynck, L. Van Langenhove & J. Mertens

Abstract

During recent years, spider silk has attracted the interest of a lot of scientists because spider silk, and in particular the \“dragline” thread, is a fibre with a unique combination of high tensile strength, high strain and an ultra-low weight. In order to help explain the structure-property relationship of spider silk, the tensile behaviour of both dragline and cocoon silk of A. diadematus is compared. Although their breaking strain is almost the same, the stress-strain behaviour of both spider silks is completely different. Moreover, the influence of the testing speed is discussed. In the case of cocoon spider silk, the testing speed has a statistically significant influence on the measured tensile properties, especially o

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