The brittle fracture of solids by liquid impact, by solid impact, and by shock

Abstract The type of stress pulse produced when a liquid mass strikes a solid at high velocity is first examined. Compressible behaviour, giving rise to a sharp peak of pressure, is found to occur in the initial stages of the impact. The duration of this peak depends on the dimensions and impact velocity of the liquid mass, and also on the compressible wave velocity for the liquid. A comparison is made with pulses produced by solid/solid impact and by the detonation of small quantities of explosive. Both the high-speed liquid impact and the explosive loading give intense pulses of duration only a few microseconds. A solid/solid impact has, by comparison, a much longer impact time of the order of hundreds of microseconds. The fracture of glasses and hard polymers using these three types of loading is described. The development of fracture is followed by high-speed photography. Differences in the modes of fracture are attributed to variations in the shape and duration of the applied stress pulses. Short circumferential fractures produced around the loaded area in liquid impact and explosive loading are shown to be initiated by the Rayleigh surface wave at points where flaws existed. More complex fracture patterns on the front surfaces of plates are due to the reinforcement of the surface wave with components of stress waves reflected from the back surface. A combination of impact loading and etching makes it possible to investigate the distribution and depths of flaws, their role in the fracture process, and the effect which etching has upon them. The observation on the deformation produced in solids by liquid impact has practical significance in the problem of supersonic aircraft flying through rain and in the erosion of turbine blades moving at high velocity through wet steam.