ABSTRACT
STFI Solid Support Test Fellers et al. [17] developed a test method based on the solid lateral support principle. The equipment is shown diagrammatically in Fig. 21. A 15 mm wide paper strip is fastened in two clamps and loaded horizontally. One clamp is attached to a load cell, while a motor moves the other. A sliding zone is created between the clamps, where 20 mm long steel blocks attached to each clamp support the specimen on each side to prevent buckling. The clearance between the paper and the supports can be regulated by turning micrometers. The free span is chosen to be 1 mm, which is short enough to ensure that buckling of the unsupported part of the specimen does not occur. Failure occurs randomly everywhere along the free span, showing that friction is not controlling failure behavior and is not sub tracted from the failure load. If friction did have an important role, then the load would vary along the length of the free span, and the location of the failures would show a statistical clustering. This was not seen.
