Internal-strain measurements of longitudinal pulses in conical bars

Longitudinal stress waves in a truncated 20-deg solid cone were investigated using embedded semiconductor strain gages. The cone, composed of an aluminum-filled epoxy, was struck normally at its small end with a 1/2-in.-diam steel ball traveling at a velocity of 170 jps. The results show the magnitude of the resulting stress wave to be nonuniform over a plane cross section perpendicular to the cone axis, the strain being greater at the center of the cone than near the surface, and the nonuniformity to increase with distance of travel from the impact end. The surface-strain measurements were compared with the one-dimensional theory of longitudinal waves in cones developed by Landon and Quinney as solved by Kenner and Goldsmith for a onehalf cycle sine-squared input pulse, and found to be in qualitative agreement with this theory, but to vary significantly in strain magnitude due to the strain nonuniformity over plane cross sections. The nonuniformity was compared with the Pochhammer-Chree theory for stress waves in cylindrical bars when that theory was evaluated for a cross section equivalent to the cone cross section. The trends of the deviations were similar, but the variations measured in the cone were consistently greater than that predicted by the theory.