The Application of Quartz Transducer Technique in SHPB

During testing low impedance materials (so-called soft materials) by a conventional split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB), the transmission strain pulse is too weak to be collected correctly. In addition, the soft material specimen will not deform homogeneously during the testing, which makes it impossible to get valid data. In this paper, a polyurethane foam material was tested by SHPB using a quartz transducer technique. The stress equilibrium in the specimen was monitored by quartz transducer mounted at two end faces of the specimen. Experimental results showed that the amplitude of transmitted signals were increased greatly. Meanwhile, we used a pulse-shaper technique to increase the rise time of the incident pulse, which could ensure stress equilibrium and homogeneous deformation in the specimen. Compressive stress-strain behaviors of the foam showed that there was little effects of strain rates on the material properties at strain-rate of 1 000~4 000 s-1.