| Recycling is one of the most significant issues affecting today's paper industry. In this study, tensile tests were conducted, on microsurgically excised fibers, to find out the effects of (1) recycling, (2) drying restraint and (3) orientation position in the anisotropic paper.;Single fiber specimens were excised from virgin and recycled machine-made paper. The various drying conditions applied to the paper were (i) machine dried, (ii) fully restrained in Machine Direction during drying on frames and (iii) 2% wet stretch applied in MD and dried on frames.;The 'cut-out' fibers were tested in a Modified Instron Tensile Tester. High resolution video equipment was used to record the tests. Strains were determined from the video images as well as from the jaw movement data. The modulus values were found out from individual stress-strain graphs. The results showed that the tensile strength and modulus of elasticity decreased after recycling for the fibers tested in this study, while the strain to failure increased. For the fibers and paper system used in this research, it was observed that the tensile strength and elastic modulus increased when these fibers were restrained from shrinking during drying. This result was noticed for both virgin and recycled fibers. It was also found that the fibers aligned in the machine direction are stiffer and stronger than those aligned in the cross machine direction. |
