Destructive tensile tests on naturally aged, historical textiles, is rarely carried out. The biaxial tensile testing device, designed to work on the relatively small samples size of 1 cm², allowed working with 3 to 5 repetitions.

The group of specimens tested are all plain canvas including a selvedge, and are described in following table.

Biaxial tensile tests were performed at a speed of 2 mm/min, with the maximum force of 200 N. For conservation purposes, the typical tension values are usually between 0.5 and 3 N/cm, and tension values beyond 4 N/cm are mostly useful to describe the behavior of a textile in critical conditions.

A typical tensile plot with the indication of the 4 secant modulus values measured. A: initial response; B: decrimping; C: start of the elastic response; D: final elastic response.

Weft secant modulus at C is higher than warp for most of the specimens.

The correlation between higher tensile modulus (E) and lower crimp in the weft direction.