Skip to content
Research Article Open access CC BY 4.0

Mechanical and Fracture Behaviour of the Maguey Manso (Agave salmiana) Cuticle: An Engineering Approach

Carlos A. Mora Santos, J. Bedolla Hernández, V. Flores Lara, Evelio Ortega Alvarado

Journal of Scientific Research and Reports · pp. 448–458 · Published 5 Nov 2025

10.9734/jsrr/2025/v31i113680

Abstract

In this work, the tensile behaviour of an isolated maguey manso cuticle is studied from an engineering perspective. The maguey manso is a plant in the Agavaceae family that grows in the semi-dry and cold Central Valley of Mexico, among the States of Mexico, Hidalgo, Puebla and Tlaxcala. The leaves of a maguey, known as pencas, are formed basically by sap, fibers along their full length, and the cuticle. It was found that the maguey cuticle behaves as a viscoelastic material. Once the tensile stress is reached, the cuticle breaks catastrophically in a brittle way. Scanning electron microscopy reveals that the complex and homogeneous microstructural arrangement of stomata in the cuticle contributes to anisotropic and brittle crack propagation behaviour, due to preferential stomatal alignment.

Strength properties salmiana cuticle maguey manzo

Cited by 1

1 citation reported by external sources — individual citing-article records aren't available to list yet.

Article metrics

Real usage data collected on this platform.

0

Page views

0

PDF downloads

0

Outbound clicks

1

Citations

Views by country

Approximate, from request IP at view time — not citizenship or institution. Countries with fewer than 5 views are grouped as "Other".

No views recorded yet.

Traffic sources

Referring site, by host.

No traffic recorded yet.

Views and downloads exclude known bots/crawlers. Citations combines this platform's own DOI-resolved index with each external source's own reported total — see Cited by above for individually listed citing works. Last refreshed 0 seconds ago.