A new Kolsky tension bar has been re-designed and developed at Sandia National Laboratories, CA. The new design uses the concept that a solid striker is fired to impact an end cap attached to the open end of the gun barrel to generate dynamic tensile loading. The gun barrel here serves as part of the loading device. The incident bar that is connected to the gun barrel and the transmission bar follow the design similar to the Kolsky compression bar. The bar supporting and aligning systems are the same as those in the Kolsky compression bar design described by Song et al (2009 Meas. Sci. Technol. 20 115701). Due to the connection complication among the gun barrel, bars and specimen, stress-wave propagation in the new Kolsky tension bar system is comprehensively analyzed. Based on the stress-wave analysis, the strain gage location on the incident bar needs to be carefully determined. A highly precise laser-beam measurement system is recommended to directly measure the displacement of the incident bar end. Dynamic tensile characterization of a 4330-V steel using this new Kolsky tension bar is presented as an example.
A Kolsky apparatus with numerous modifications has been designed for mechanical characterization of materials at high strain rates. These modifications include employing a highly precise optical table, pillow blocks with Frelon®-coated linear bearings as bar supports and a laser system for better precision bar alignment, etc. In addition, the striker bars were coated with Teflon® to minimize the friction with the gun barrel after removal of the conventional plastic sabots. This new design significantly simplifies the alignment process, improving the final alignment and calibration in the bar system; both are critical for validity and accuracy of the resulting data. An example of a dynamic experiment on a 6061 aluminum specimen by using this newly designed Kolsky bar is also presented.
Due to their high energy absorption capabilities, polyurethane (PU) foams have been widely used in many applications. The mechanical behavior of Polyurethane (PU) foams has been attracting the attention from engineers and researchers. But most of work was to study the compressive behavior of PU foams. Very little knowledge is available about the fracture behavior of the PU foams. In this paper, single edge notch bend (SENB) and single edge notch tension (SENT) tests are conducted to study the mode-I fracture behavior of a rigid closed cell PU foam, PMDI 20, with a nominal density of 20 pcf (320 kg/m3). The stress intensity factor KIC is calculated from the loading curves. The displacement and strain field around the crack tip is obtained using digital image correlation (DIC) technique.
The mechanical properties of some materials (Cu, Ni, Ag, etc.) have been shown to develop strong dependence on the geometric dimensions, resulting in a size effect. Several theories have been proposed to model size effects, but have been based on very few experiments conducted at appropriate scales. Some experimental results implied that size effects are caused by increasing strain gradients and have been used to confirm many strain gradient theories. On the other hand, some recent experiments show that a size effect exists in the absence of strain gradients. This report describes a brief analytical and experimental study trying to clarify the material and experimental issues surrounding the most influential size-effect experiments by Fleck et al (1994). This effort is to understand size effects intended to further develop predictive models.
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