However, there is a lack of scientific data on the mechanical properties of luffa sponge material because up to now its main practical use is a body scrub in the bathroom. Due to the lack of experimental proofs, their complex hierarchy microstructures and other common limitations of biological materials, potential applications have not been implemented in practice for luffa sponge material as well as luffa fibres.
To this end, the mechanical properties of luffa sponge columns were tested and compared with other cellular materials to check the performance of this light weight material. Uniaxial quasi-static compressive tests were conducted at a strain rate of 10−3 s−1 by using an Instron machine to study the mechanical properties of luffa sponge material. Cylindrical specimens with different relative density were tested at a room temperature of 25° C and a humidity of approximately 40%. An energy efficiency method was adopted to obtain the values of the densification strain and plateau stress, and thus the energy absorption capacity per unit volume. The experimental results were also discussed together with test results published by other researchers for other celluar materials.