Characterization of Shear Behavior in Stainless Steel Wire Mesh Using Bias-Extension and Picture Frame Tests

The main purpose of this paper is to find a suitable method for determining the in-plane shear characteristics of a type of cellular metal plain-woven stainless steel wire mesh. That no ready-made standard test exists for investigating the in-plane shear properties of the wire mesh must be noted. Two types of in-plane shear test methods that are normally used for shear tests of textile structures, that is, the bias-extension test and the picture-frame test, were conducted and employed in this work. To determine whether they can provide a pure and uniform shear region during a test, the Digital Image Correlation (DIC) approach is used as an auxiliary measurement of strain distribution for both methods. Based on the comparison and analysis of results from those two tests, a picture-frame test with a corners cut-off sample was found to be a more suitable method than a bias-extension test for determining the shear properties of the wire mesh. However, the bias-extension test can provide a simple and reliable method for determining the lock-angle of a wire mesh.