Clamped circular copper plates have been subjected to exponentially decaying
underwater blast waves with peak pressures in the range 10 MPa to 300 MPa and
decay constants varying between 0.05 ms to 1.1 ms. The deformation and failure
modes were observed by high-speed photography. For the thin plates considered in
this study, the failure modes were primarily governed by the peak pressures
and were reasonably independent of the blast wave decay constant. Three
modes of deformation and failure were identified. At low pressures, the plates
undergo bending and stretching without rupture (mode I). At intermediate
pressures a range of tensile tearing modes were observed, from petalling
failures to tearing at the supports with increasing blast pressures. These
tearing modes are referred to as mode II failures. At the highest pressures
investigated here, the plate tears at the supports in a manner that is reminiscent of
a
shear-off failure. This failure is labeled as mode III. Scanning electron
micrographs of the failure surfaces showed that in all cases, the local failure
mechanism was tensile necking. Finite element (FE) simulations employing a
local shear failure criterion are used to model the rupture of the material.
Appropriately calibrated FE models capture all failure modes with sufficient
fidelity.
Keywords
dynamic fracture, petalling, underwater blast, FE
simulation