The effect of shockwave profile shape on dynamic brittle failure

The role of shock wave loading profile is investigated for the failure processes in a brittle material. The dynamic damage response of ductile metals has been demonstrated to be critically dependent on the shockwave profile and the stress-state of the shock. Changing from a square to triangular (Taylor) profile with an identical peak compressive stress has been reported to increase the “spall strength” by over a factor of two and suppress damage mechanisms. The spall strength of tungsten heavy alloy (WHA) based on plate impact square-wave loading has been extensively reported in the literature. Here a triangular wave loading profile is achieved with a composite flyer plate of graded density in contrast to the square-wave loading. Counter to the strong dependence in wave profile in ductile metals, for WHA, both square and triangle wave profiles the failure is by brittle cleavage fracture with additional energy dissipation through crack branching in the more brittle tungsten particles, largely indistinguishable between wave profiles. The time for crack nucleation is negligible compared to the duration of the experiment and the crack propagation rate is limited to the sound speed as defined by the shock velocity