INCREMENTAL STRESS-STRAIN RESPONSE OF POLYMERS USING INSTRUMENTED REVERSE TAYLOR ANVIL IMPACTS

Instrumented reverse Taylor impact experiments were conducted on pure epoxy and epoxy‐cast Al+Fe2O3 composites to determine the incremental stress‐strain response under dynamic loading. High‐speed camera images were used to measure transient (axial and areal) deformations, and velocity interferometry was used to record complex elastic and plastic wave interactions. For polymeric materials, elastic strains are generally not negligible compared to plastic strains and the rigid‐plastic material behavior assumed in typical Taylor tests for metallic materials cannot be applied. Hence, in this work, a one‐dimensional elastic‐plastic wave propagation analysis, developed by Hutchings [J. Mech. Phys. Solids 26, 1979] to account for the appreciable elastic strains that develop before the material yields, was used to obtain stress‐strain behavior for each polymer composition. The relative strengths between each composition are compared to ascertain the influence that particle reinforcement has on material properties...