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In this paper, Split Hopkinson Bar technique was used to investigate the shear behaviour of adhesively bonded assemblies at high rates of loading. New sample geometry was adopted so that the compressive wave is transformed in a shear loading in the sample. Samples are conditioned at 20°C and 50% of hygrometry to eliminate any interference with temperature and humidity effects. The new technique is applied to an assembly built with a cyanoacrylate based adhesive and a metallic (Steel) adherent. They are found to be highly rate sensitive.

The sensitivity of the flow stress of polymers to strain-rate is one of the major concerns in mechanics of materials since polymers and polymer matrix composites are widely used in many engineering applications. In this paper, we present tests on Nylon 6 and Nylon 66 on wide range of strain-rates (0.001-5000s⁻¹). Specifically, we used INSTRON machine for low strain-rates. The high strain-rate measurements were inferred from the Hopkinson bar tests. Only the compressive behaviour was investigated. To eliminate any interference with temperature and humidity effects, test samples were conditioned at 20°C and 50% of hygrometry. Moreover, the effects of the specimen geometry were considered. The current study results are also compared to values found in literature.

Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB) has become a frequently used technique for measuring uni-axial compressive stress-strain relationship of various engineering materials under high strain rates. The pulse shape generated in the incident bar is sensitive to the length of the striker bar. In this paper, a finite element simulation of a Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar is performed to estimate the effect of varying length of striker bar on the stress-strain relationship of a material. A series of striker bars with different lengths, from 200mm to 350mm, are employed to obtain the stress-strain response of AL6061-T6 in both simulation and experiment. A comparison is made between the experimental and the computed stress-strain curves. Finally the influence of variation of striker bar length on the sample's stress-strain response is presented.

Polymer-bonded explosives (PBXs) are particulate composite materials composed of crystalline explosive grains bound in a relatively soft polymeric binder. It is important to optimize the fracture properties, while still maintaining the low sensitiveness and high explosiveness of PBX. This paper describes a study on the fracture properties and failure modes of a PBX by adopting a newly proposed dynamic fracture experimentation method — notched semi-circular bend (NSCB) specimen loaded with split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) which was used in this study. This method offers the advantage of simultaneously determining the fracture initiation toughness, fracture energy, fracture propagation toughness and fracture velocity. The crack propagation is monitored by using a synchronous high-speed camera, which allows the observation of strain field history via digital image correlation process. The experimental results indicate that both the initiation toughness and the propagation toughness linearly increase with loading rate. The propagation fracture toughness is found to increase with fracture velocity, and a limiting fracture velocity is obtained. The failure modes are interpreted by using various theoretical models. Results suggest that the debonding strength of the binder is much smaller than the crystal fracture strength. The tensile strength is similar to the debonding strength, while the compression strength is somewhere intermediate between them.

Understanding of the tensile strength of the solid propellant bears important applications in materials science, aerospace, defense, and other engineering disciplines. To obtain the mechanical properties of composite modified double base (CMDB) propellant under impact loading, this paper proposes an indirect tensile testing method to measure the full dynamic tensile strength of the CMDB propellant under dynamic loads. The Flattened Brazilian Disc (FBD) specimen was impacted with a 14.5mm diameter split Hopkinson bar (SHPB) system. The pulse shaping technique is used to achieve dynamic force balance, and thus eliminates the loading inertial effect and enables quasi-static stress analysis. The experimental results show that the dynamic tensile strength of the CMDB propellant is loading rate dependent. The dynamic FBD method provides an easy and cost-effective way to measure dynamic tensile strength and other brittle composite materials.

Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB) has become a frequently used technique for measuring uniaxial compressive stress-strain relationship of various engineering materials under high strain rates. The pulse shape generated in the incident bar is sensitive to the length of the striker bar. In this paper, a finite element simulation of a Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar is performed to estimate the effect of varying length of striker bar on the stress-strain relationship of a material. A series of striker bars with different lengths, from 200mm to 350mm, are employed to obtain the stress-strain response of AL6061-T6 in both simulation and experiment. A comparison is made between the experimental and the computed stress-strain curves. Finally the influence of variation of striker bar length on the sample's stress-strain response is presented.