Improved specimen recovery in tensile split Hopkinson bar

This paper presents an improved specimen recovery method for the tensile split Hopkinson bar (TSHB) technique. The method is based on the trapping of residual stress waves with the use of momentum trap bars. As is well known, successful momentum trapping in TSHB is highly sensitive to experimental uncertainties, especially on the incident bar side of the set-up. However, as is demonstrated in this paper, significant improvement in the reliability of specimen recovery is obtained by using two momentum trap bars in contact with the incident bar. This makes the trapping of the reflected wave insensitive to striker speed and removes the need for a precision set gap between the incident bar and the momentum trap.

Target Configurations for Plate-Impact Recovery Experiments

Normal plate impact recovery experiments have been perfomed on thin plates of ceramics, with and without a back momentum trap, in a one-stage gas gun. The free-surface velocity of the momentum trap was measured, using a normal velocity (or displacement) interferometer. In all recovered samples, cross-shaped cracks were seen to have been formed during the impact, at impact velocities as low as 27 m/s, even though star-shaped flyer plates were used. These cracks appear to be due to in-plane tensile stresses which develop in the sample as a result of the size mismatch between the flyer plate and the specimen (the impacting area of the flyer being smaller than the impacted area of the target) and because of the free-edge effects. Finite element computations, using PRONTO-2D and DYNA-3D, based on linear elasticity, confirm this observation. Based on numerical computations, a simple configuration for plate impact experiments is proposed, which minimizes the inplane tensile stresses allowing recovery experiments at much higher velocities than possible by the star-shaped flyer plate configuration. This is confirmed by normal plate impact recovery experiments which produced no tensile cracks at velocities in a range where the star-shaped flyer invariably introduces cross-shaped cracks in the sample. The new configuration includes lateral as well as longitudinal momentum traps.

Damage Evolution in Silicon Nitride under Repeated Dynamic Loading

The high modulus and limited plasticity of most ceramic materials inhibits the systematic study of deformation and fracture mechanisms. However, the use of repeatedly applied transient stress pulses allows incremental damage to be introduced without necessarily fracturing the specimen. In this study two types of hot pressed silicon nitrides, one having an amorphous boundary phase (6% yttria, 3% alumina), and the other having a crystalline boundary phase (8% yttria, 1% alumina) were tested using a novel split Hopkinson pressure bar technique with a momentum trap.