SPLIT HOPKINSON PRESSURE BAR IMPULSE EXPERIMENTAL MEASUREMENT WITH NUMERICAL VALIDATION

Materials and their development process are highly dependent on proper experimental testing under wide range of loading within which high-strain rate conditions play a very significant role. For such dynamic loading Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB) is widely used for investigating the dynamic behavior of various materials. The presented paper is focused on the SHPB impulse measurement process using experimental and numerical methods. One of the main problems occurring during tests are oscillations recorded by the strain gauges which adversely affect results. Thus, it is desired to obtain the peak shape in the incident bar of SHPB as “smooth” as possible without any distortions. Such impulse characteristics can be achieved using several shaping techniques, e.g. by placing a special shaper between two bars, which in fact was performed by the authors experimentally and subsequently was validated using computational methods.