A New Kolsky Bar Dynamic Spall Technique for Brittle Materials

Abstract

For many years there have been controversial opinions on the value of dynamic tensile data obtained through the Kolsky bar spall tension technique. This is primarily due to the experimental conditions (i.e., specimen stress state and strain rate) not being well defined for these types of tests, thus making data interpretation and comparisons difficult. In this paper, a new spall theory is presented that ensures constant strain rate deformation while maintaining a uniform tensile stress within a large portion of the specimen. In light of this theoretical framework, pulse shaping was carefully designed to experimentally obtain this solution in Kolsky bar experiments. The incident wave generated under the guideline of the new theory has shown promising results for better refined Kolsky bar spall tension experiments on brittle materials.