Materials Testing of Arthropod Cuticle Preparations

Abstract

The science of strength of materials is very old, and its importance was certainly appreciated by the monument builders of antiquity, although their studies were essentially empirical in approach. The systematic study of material behavior really stems from the period of da Vinci and Galileo, when tests on materials such as wood and stone were made because of material failure problems associated with large buildings. It was not until the nineteenth century that the subject progressed considerably, owing to the proliferation of materials problems associated with machinery and transportation during the Industrial Revolution. A further step forward in understanding properties of materials came at the end of the last century when the science of microscopy was used to study the structure of engineering materials. Information obtained by microscopy combined with mechanical test data began to show how the mechanical properties were entirely dependent on the structure of a material.