Strength of fabric covered aircraft skin

[Matthew]

As I was watching the hail hit my window a couple hours ago, I thought about the strength of the fabric that is used for covering.

How resilient is it, how much punishment can it take? With something like hail, how does it compare to a metal skin?

The largest hail stones I could see today looked about 1" diameter.

Just wondering,
Matt

 

[RotorAndWing]

Years ago when they were selling new Bellanca Vikings one of the things the salesmen would like to do is take a ball bearing out of their pocket and throw it at the fuselage skin, which was fabric. It would hit and bounce back, he would catch it then tell you "let's see Cessna demonstrate that!".

As fabric covering gets older the coating (such as butyrate dope) will become harder and a hailstone may cause "spiderwebing" or cracking. This can be repaired by rejuvenating the area and softening of the material.