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1 August 2005 MODELING OF THE STRESS-STRAIN BEHAVIOR OF EGG SAC SILK OF THE SPIDER ARANEUS DIADEMATUS
Els Van Nimmen, Kris Gellynck, Tom Gheysens, Lieva Van Langenhove, Johan Mertens
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Abstract

Spider silk has attracted the attention of many scientists because of its desirable physical properties. Most of this attention has been devoted to dragline silk, a thread that has high tensile strength, high strain and ultra-low weight. To help understand structure-property relationships in spider silks, the tensile behavior of egg sac (cylindrical gland) silk of Araneus diadematus Clerck 1757 was compared with dragline (major ampullate gland) and silkworm silks. In addition, stress-strain curves of egg sac silk were simulated by a spring-dashpot model, specifically a Standard Linear Solid (SLS) model. The SLS model consists of a spring in series with a dashpot and in parallel with another spring, resulting in three unknown parameters. The average stress-strain curve of fibers from five different egg sacs could be accurately described by the model. Closer examination of the individual stress-strain curves revealed that in each egg sac two populations of fibers could be distinguished based on the parameters of the SLS model. The stress-strain curves of the two populations clearly differed in their behavior beyond the yield point and were probably derived from two different layers within the egg sac. This indicates that silks in the two layers of A. diadematus egg sacs probably have different tensile behavior.

Els Van Nimmen, Kris Gellynck, Tom Gheysens, Lieva Van Langenhove, and Johan Mertens "MODELING OF THE STRESS-STRAIN BEHAVIOR OF EGG SAC SILK OF THE SPIDER ARANEUS DIADEMATUS," The Journal of Arachnology 33(2), 629-639, (1 August 2005). https://doi.org/10.1636/CS05-5.1
Received: 24 May 2005; Published: 1 August 2005
KEYWORDS
Araneidae
cocoon
cylindrical gland
spider silk
tensile behavior
tubuliform gland
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