Superplasticity is a feature of a material or alloy which allows the material to deform plastically to an extremely large strain at low values of stress under certain loading conditions of strain rate and temperature. Eutectic tin-lead alloy is a practical material for research investigations as it possesses a superplastic behavior at room temperature and low strain rate which makes it a useful tool in simulating the ordinary engineering materials at high strain rate and temperature. This alloy has been extensively used as a model material to simulate behavior of engineering materials at high strain rates and temperatures. In this paper, superplastic tin-lead alloy was used at room temperature to simulate the closure of cavities in steels at high temperatures in the hot region under dynamic loading (high strain rate) under the effect of compressive loads using flat platens (open dies). Hollow specimens having different values of bore diameter (Db) to outer diameter (Dout), of the same height and volume were investigated under different values of height reduction percentages ranging from 20% to 80% , and the percentage of cavity closure at each reduction percentage was determined. It was found that the cavity closure percentage increases or decreases at slow rate for reduction percentage in height less than 40% and increases more rapidly for reduction percentages in height above this value. Furthermore, specimens having smaller values of ratio (Db/Dout) resulted in higher percentage of cavity closure than specimens having higher ratios at the same value of reduction in height percentage. Complete cavity closure has occurred in specimens having the ratios of 0.1 and 0.2 at 75% reduction in height.
Influence of free water content on the compressive mechanical behaviour of cement mortar under high strain rate
