Investigation into the Response of Fully Clamped Circular Steel, Copper, and Aluminum Plates Subjected to Shock Loading

Abstract

The plastic responses of clamped mild steel, copper, and aluminum circular plates subjected to blast loads are investigated. In this way, extensive experimental results concerning the variations of central deflection and natural strain distributions are presented. The effects of plate thickness, stand-off distance, and material properties on the mid-point deflection, on the deformation profile and on the natural strain distributions are considered. Moreover, the influence of impulse on the mid-point deflection and strain distribution are demonstrated. The applied impulse imparted to the plate was obtained from the recorded motion of the ballistic pendulum. Using the obtained experimental input-output data, closed form mathematical models based on nondimensional analysis and Singular Value Decomposition method have been found. The comparisons of the closed form mathematical models of this work with those in literature illustrate the robustness and the efficacy of this approach.

Keywords:

• Blast loading
• Circular plate
• Nondimensional analysis
• Plastic deformation
• SVD

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors express their thanks to Prof G.N. Nurick, Dr. G.S. Langdon and Mr. T.J. Cloete for their help with the experiments and for machining the modified ballistic pendulum. The authors also wish to thank all of member of BISRU group at the University of Cape Town.

The authors also would acknowledge Prof. N. NarimanZadeh for valuable discussions and guidance about modeling and SVD method.

Notes

^#Communicated by N. Banichuk.