Small-scale Ballistic Cavitation: High Pressures and Fast Pulses Fracturing Soft Material

Small-scale Ballistic Cavitation (SBC) is a device designed to deliver high pressure pulses of air though a needle for times as short as five milliseconds. These pulses replicate the temporary cavity formed from ballistic impacts at the same timescale, but without a projectile and on a much smaller scale. It delivers tunable energy densities across a ballistically relevant range with high speed airflow. This image shows the aftermath of delivering a single five millisecond pulse at a pressure of 160 atm within an ultra-soft solid, of similar stiffness to body tissue. The fractured surface is about 1 cm in diameter and the viewing angle is down the axis of the needle. The high rate of deformation causes the three symmetric crack lobes to form around the needle axis as the material is cavitated.Ope