Impact tension of sheet metals - Effect of initial specimen length

Abstract
It is well known that a specimen for impact testing of materials must be optimized concerning its dimensions. The main reason is to reduce strain gradients due to the effects of elastic-plastic wave propagation. On the other hand, when Split Hopkinson Bar (SHB) is applied for tension test, the net displacement of the specimen ends is very limited, usually from 2.0 to 3.0 mm. Thus, to reach maximum strain 0.5 the specimen length must be reduced to dimensions from 4.0 mm to 6.0 mm. Consequently small diameter, or lateral dimensions in case of flat specimen, must be applied to assure one-dimensional deformation. Such small lengths substantially perturb the real material behavior to be determined. So the main motivation of this study was to perform a systematic analysis, numerical and analytical, to find differences in behavior of short and long specimens loaded in impact tension. The FE code Abaqus/Explicit has been used to simulate several specimen lengths from 10 mm to 40 mm, and several velocities from 10 m/s to 100 m/s.