Experimental study of the high strain rate shear behaviour of Ti6Al4V

Three different high strain rate shear test techniques are applied on the titanium alloy Ti6Al4V. Two techniques for testing of bulk materials and one technique for sheet materials are used: torsion of thin-walled tubes, compression of hat-shaped specimens and tension of planar shear specimens. The tests are carried out on respectively torsion, compression and tensile split Hopkinson bar setups. Although shear stresses dominate the stress state in these three tests, the local stress state and its distribution and evolution are different. Therefore, the three techniques are considered to be rather complementary than equivalent tests. In this work, the value of the three test techniques for material characterization is evaluated. Where possible, digital image correlation (DIC) is used to clarify the test results. In addition, parameters difficult to assess experimentally are estimated through finite element simulations of the three tests