Abstract
Applications of membrane technology in water desalination and wastewater treatment have increased significantly
in the past fewdecades due to itsmany advantages over otherwater treatment technologies.Water treatment
membranes provide high flux and contaminant rejection ability and require good mechanical strength and
durability. Thus, assessing the mechanical properties of water treatment membranes is critical not only to their
design, but also for studying their failure mechanisms, including the surface damage, mechanical and chemical
ageing, delamination and loss of dimensional stability of the membranes. The various experimental techniques
to assess themechanical properties ofwastewater treatment and desalinationmembranes are reviewed. Uniaxial
tensile test, bending test, dynamic mechanical analysis, nanoindentation and bursting tests are the most widely
used mechanical characterization methods for water treatment membranes. Mechanical degradations induced
by fouling, chemical cleaning as well as membrane delamination are then discussed. Moreover, in order to
study the membranesmechanical responses under similar loading conditions, the stress-state of the membranes
are analyzed and advanced mechanical testing approaches are proposed. Some perspectives are highlighted to
study the structure-properties relationship for wastewater treatment and water desalination membranes.