*3.5. Mechanical Testing of the Bio-Composites and Alginate Hydrogels*

Tensile testing was performed on an Instron machine model 5582 with Blue hill 2 operating software and a 100-N load cell at a rate of 0.05 mm s−1. The tensile measurements included three cycles of preconditioning up to 10%, followed by stretching to failure parallel to the fibers' direction.
