High added value technologies, as well as critical infrastructures in service, are more and more subjected to severe loadings. In order to increase their survivability in harsh environment, structures and materials have to be characterized under dynamic conditions such as crash test, ballistic impact and blast loading. During these extreme events, it is not always easy to implement sensors able to catch the evolution of physical parameters. The presented work exposes an experimental contribution to the characterization of shock wave effects and propagation in materials and on structures. Cases of study are split into two categories: soft impacts and hard impacts. This includes the use of instruments developed for this intention, such as shock pressure gauges and laser Doppler velocimeters and non-destructive techniques for damage assessment.
The lecture will cover the following topics:
- Historical overview
- Analytical approach to stress wave propagation
- Dispersion
- Musing about threshold
- Computational
- Experimental
- Continuum limits
- Case studies
- Shell – experiment vs. FE analysis
- Rock drilling – how much of impact energy is lost in the rock
- How to make torsional waves out of axial ones
- Impacted rod with spiral slots – FE vs. experiment
- Cheep wisdom (or triviality) at the end
© 2008–2018 Institute of Thermomechanics of the CAS, v. v. i. 
