Alpine Draws

somewhat theoretical, but I was wondering about this the other day. Is a non extended alpine draw (sling wrapped back three times between 2 carabiners) three times as strong as a fully extended draw because it is tripled? Or would the tripled back sling break at the same force as a fully extended one. I might be totally wrong, but it sure feels more sturdy when clipping an unextended, but maybe an illusion?

Theoretically speaking, I wonder if the friction between the 3 strands when "equalizing" under a force could actually lessen the overall strength of the tripled configuration...

I'd guess tripled is stronger although not always 3X.

If tripled is stronger, it probably does not matter in a static sense because the biners are mostly the same strength either way.

Hypothetically yes but 22KN for most slings/biners is plenty strong enough already.
I wouldn't worry about it. Your body will break long before they do.

I guess weaker.

Weaker because there will be more sling on the gate side

I've seen reference to a "wrap 3, pull 2" anchor not being as strong as it theoretically should be. Using 1" tubular webbing, in theory, it should be around 16,000 lbs (4 legs of webbing at 4k strength each). However, from what I've seen, pull tests show it's more likely to support 7-9000 lbs before breakage. Breakage is due to friction between strands of the webbing at the anchor carabiner. I would tend to think that an alpine draw would behave in a similar fashion- stronger than a singled runner, but not 3x as strong. Part of it likely depends on whether you are using dyneema or nylon for the runners too....