This paper presents an experimental study to determine the tensile properties of the envelope fabric Uretek3216L under biaxial cyclic loading.First the biaxial cyclic tests were carefully carried out on the envelope material to obtain the stress-strain data and the corresponding nonlinearity and orthotropy of the material were analyzed. Then for some determination options with different stress ratios the least squares method minimizing the strain terms was used to calculate the elastic constants from the experimental data.Finally the influences of the determination options with different stress ratios and the reciprocal relationship on the elastic constants were discussed.Results show that the orthotropy of the envelope material can be attributed to the unbalanced crimp of their constitutive yarns in warp and weft directions and the elastic constants vary noticeably with the determination options as well as the normalized stress ratios.In real design practice it is more reasonable to use constants determined for specific stress states in particular stress ratios depending on the project＆#39;s needs.Also calculating the structures with two limitative sets of elastic constants instead of using only one set is recommendable in light of the great variety of the constant＆#39;s values.
