Composite materials are used in a wide variety of low temperature applications because of their unique and highly tailorable properties. These low temperature applications of composites include their use in Arctic environments and most of them involve dynamic loads, for example, spacecraft applications where they use cryogenic engines, hypervelocity impact situations at very high altitudes, civil engineering applications in extreme cold regions, and offshore structures in cold regions. The U.S. Navy stated that under certain conditions naval vessels might encounter strain rates up to 1200/sec. Because the dynamic properties of composite materials may vary widely with both strain rates and temperature, it is important to use the dynamic properties at the expected temperatures when the loading conditions involve high strain rates and extreme temperatures. Very few materials have been characterized at high strain rates even at room temperature. Still less effort has been spent in trying to model the high strain rate properties to develop a predictive capability at room temperature. It has been hoped that earlier modeling for metals, such as Johnson and Cook [1], and Zerilli and Armstrong [2] might be used for composite materials. The Johnson-Cook model was modified by Weeks and Sun [3] for composite materials. Other recent modeling research has been performed by Theruppukuzki and Sun [4], Hsiao, Daniel and Cordes [5] and Tsai and Sun [6]. Woldesenbet and Vinson [7] have characterized the high strain rate and fiber orientation effects on one typical graphite/epoxy composite. Most of these characterizations model ultimate strengths only.
Challenges related to testing of composite materials at high strain rates using the split Hopkinson bar technique
