3.7. Assessment of physical characteristics
Since leather is a utility product, it is essential to study the
influence of the fibre opening system on the strength properties.
The physical measurement results such as tensile strength, percentage
elongation, tear strength, load at grain crack and distension
at grain crack for the conventional and experimental leathers are
given in Table 4. It was observed from the results that the experimental
leather exhibited comparable or even better properties over
the conventional leathers. More particularly, it is understood that
the replacement of chemical process by enzymatic process did not
affect the aesthetic properties of leather, rather improved it in a
much shorter duration, as observed from the results shown in
Table 5. The organoleptic properties of the enzymatically processed
leather were on par with, or superior to the conventionally processed
leather.