With braided wires several wires are wound together; under tensile loading they try to unwind. Zwick’s special clamping technology avoids premature failure at an unwanted location. Failure of these braided wires generally involves individual fraying wires with high whiplash, and with a strong probability of damage to contact extensometers; our advice is to use optical extensometers.

Optical extensometers:

• Long measurement travel (up to 900 mm)
• High resolution of 5 μm over whole measurement travel