Abstract
A new tensile tester has been developed for the purpose of studying the tensile fracture behavior of a powder bed consolidated with a low normal stress of from 1 to 30kPa. Using this tester, the tensile fracture behavior was examined for three kinds of powder. The tensile strength of the powder bed was calculated by two methods. One is an ordinary method, i. e., the tensile strength is calculated from the maximum tensile force of the powder bed. The other is our method in which the reduced tensile strength is calculated from the fracture energy of the powder bed. As a result of comparison between them, we showed that the latter is more reliable than the former.
