The Development of a High Rate Tensile Testing System for Micro Scaled Single Crystal Silicon Specimens

Structures have been built at micro scales with unique failure mechanisms that are not yet understood, in particular, under high-rate loading conditions. Consequently, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices can suffer from inconsistent performance and insufficient reliability. This research aims to understand the failure mechanisms in micro-scaled specimens deforming at high rates. Single-crystal silicon (SCS) micro specimens that are 4 μm thick are subjected to tensile loading at an average strain rate of 92 s^?1 using a miniature Hopkinson tension bar. A capacitance displacement system and piezoelectric load cell are incorporated to directly measure the strain and stress of the silicon micro specimens. The average dynamic elastic modulus of the silicon micro specimens is measured to be 226.8?±?18.50 GPa and the average dynamic tensile strength of the silicon is measured to be 1.26?±?0.310 GPa. High-speed images show that extensive fragmentation of the specimens occurs during tensile failure.     

Specimen and Grain Size Effects of Al1100 on Strain and Strain Rate Hardening at Various Strain Rates for Al1100

This paper is concerned with comparison of the tensile properties of Al1100 thin film in a micro-scale to that of Al1100 sheet in a macro-scale. The material properties of Al1100 film and sheet with a thickness of 96 μm and 1 mm respectively have been investigated at strain rates ranging from 0.001 to 100 s^?1. The experiments were conducted with Static Micro-Material Testing Machine (SMMTM) and High Speed Micro-Material Testing Machine (HSMMTM) for micro-specimens and with Instron 5583 and high speed material testing machine (HSMTM) for macro-specimens. A reliable jig system for SMMTM and HSMMTM has been newly developed for easy installation of a specimen and accurate alignment between a specimen and the jig system to enhance the reproducibility of tests. The digital image correlation (DIC) method is employed to measure the axial strain of the specimens. In order to obtain a fine speckle pattern for the DIC method, a novel technique is employed to print the speckle pattern with fine particles by blowing sprayed particles before printing. The grain sizes of two Al1100 specimens have been compared and the number of grains in the gauge cross-section has been calculated to obtain the grain number which is related to the specimen size effect. Electron Back Scattered Diffraction (EBSD) images were obtained for both micro-specimens and macro-specimens and analyzed to measure the grain size. The Al1100 film with a smaller average grain size shows larger strain hardening than the Al1100 sheet with a larger average grain size.     

Synchronous Full-Field Strain and Temperature Measurement in Tensile Tests at Low,Intermediate and High Strain Rates

Tensile tests with simultaneous full-field strain and temperature measurements at the nominal strain rates of 0.01, 0.1, 1, 200 and 3000 s^?1 are presented. Three different testing methods with specimens of the same thin and flat gage-section geometry are utilized. The full-field deformation is measured on one side of the specimen, using the DIC technique with low and high speed visible cameras, and the full-field temperature is measured on the opposite side using an IR camera. Austenitic stainless steel is used as the test material. The results show that a similar deformation pattern evolves at all strain rates with an initial uniform deformation up to the strain of 0.25–0.35, followed by necking with localized deformation with a maximum strain of 0.7–0.95. The strain rate in the necking regions can exceed three times the nominal strain rate. The duration of the tests vary from 57 s at the lowest strain rate to 197 μs at the highest strain rate. The results show temperature rise at all strain rates. The temperature rise increases with strain rate as the test duration shortens and there is less time for the heat to dissipate. At a strain rate of 0.01 s^?1 the temperature rise is small (up to 48 °C) but noticeable. At a strain rate of 0.1 the temperature rises up to 140 °C and at a strain rate of 1 s^?1 up to 260 °C. The temperature increase in the tests at strain rates of 200 s^?1 and 3000 s^?1 is nearly the same with the maximum temperature reaching 375 °C.     

Relationship between Local Strain Jumps and Temperature Bursts Due to the Portevin-Le Chatelier Effect in an Al-Mg Alloy

Local strain and temperature of an AA5754-O aluminum alloy sheet have been full-field measured during monotonous tensile tests carried out at room temperature. Sharp strain increases and temperature bursts which are locally generated by the Portevin-Le Chatelier phenomenon have been measured at the same point for two strain rates: V2?=?1.9?×?10^?3?s^?1 and V10?=?9.7?×?10^?3?s^?1. A relationship, which is based on the underlying physical mechanisms, has been established between the strain and the temperature and experimentally verified for the highest strain rate V10. The discrepancy between the theoretical and experimental results for the lowest strain rate V2 suggests that the localized plastic deformations do not follow an adiabatic transformation. Such a set-up seems to offer a direct and experimental method to check the adiabatic character of localized plastic deformations.     

A new direct biaxial testing machine for anisotropic materials

A screw-driven new biaxial testing machine for the realization of experimental investigations on anisotropic sheet materials, such as composite plates or rolled sheet metals, is presented. The described mechanical concept and servocontrol system allow cruciform specimens to be subjected to large strain biaxial tensile and compressive tests without kinematic incompatibilities. Moreover, for the proper implementation of biaxial tensile tests, the specific problems linked to the anisotropic properties of the investigated materials are taken into account; therefore, for the first time, the biaxial machine is supplied with the original ‘off-axes testing device,’ consisting of hinged fixtures with knife-edges at each arm of the cruciform specimen. A recently developed optimization method for the optimal design of flat tensile cruciform specimens is shortly reviewed. Numerical simulations illustrate the decisive superiority of the optimized specimen compared with specimen designs proposed in the literature, as well as the necessity to use the ‘off-axes’ testing technique in biaxial tests on anisotropic materials.     

A Combined Theoretical/Experimental Approach for Reducing Ringing Artifacts in Low Dynamic Testing with Servo-hydraulic Load Frames

One of the most challenging tasks facing computer-aided engineering (CAE) analysis is the acquisition of accurate tensile test data that spans quasi-static to low dynamic (10^?5/s?≤ $ \overset{.}{\varepsilon } $ ≤5?×?10²/s) strain rates ( $ \overset{.}{\varepsilon } $ ). Critical to the accuracy of data acquired over the low dynamic range is the reduction of ringing artifacts in flow data. Ringing artifacts, which are a consequence of the inertial response of the load frame, are spurious oscillations that can obscure the desired material response (i.e. load vs. time or load vs. displacement) from which flow data are derived. These oscillations tend to grow with increasing strain rate and peak at the high end of the low dynamic range on servo-hydraulic tensile test frames. Common practices for addressing ringing are data filtering, which is often problematic since filtering introduces distortion in smoothed material data, or trial-and-error design of test specimen geometries. This renders techniques for reducing ringing based upon the mechanics of the load frame and optimization of tensile specimen geometry quite attractive. In the present paper, relationships between load, stress wave propagation, and specimen geometries are addressed, to both quantify ringing and to develop specimen designs that will reduce ringing. A combined theoretical/experimental approach for tensile specimen design was developed for reducing ringing in flow data over the low dynamic range of strain rates (10^?5/s≤ $ \overset{.}{\varepsilon } $ ≤5?×?10²/s). The single camera digital image correlation (DIC) method was used to measure the displacement fields and strain rates with specimens resulting from the combined theoretical/experimental approach. While the approach was developed on a specific commercial load frame with a TRIP steel subject to a two-step quenching and partitioning heat treatment (Q&P980), it is readily adaptable to other servo-hydraulic load frames and metallic alloys. The developed approach results in a 90 % reduction in ringing artifact (with no filtering) in a tensile flow curve for Q&P980 at $ \overset{.}{\varepsilon}\kern-4pt $ = 5?×?10²/s. Results from split Hopkinson bar tests of Q&P980 were performed at $ \overset{.}{\varepsilon } $ = 500/s and compare favorably with the test data generated by the developed testing approach. Since the Q&P980 steel represents a new generation of advanced high strength steels, we also evaluated its strain rate sensitivity over the low dynamic range.     

A tension split Hopkinson bar for investigating the dynamic behavior of sheet metals

The dynamic response of sheet metals at high strain rate is investigated with a tensile split Hopkinson bar test using plate type specimens. The tension split Hopkinson bar inevitably causes some errors in the strain at grips with the plate type specimens, since the grip and specimens disturb the one-dimensional wave propagation in bars. To validate the experiment, the level of error induced from the grips is estimated by comparing the waves acquired from experiments with the Pochhammer-Chree solution. The optimum geometry of the specimen is determined to minimize the loading equilibrium error. High strain rate tensile tests are then performed with auto-body sheet metals in order to construct their appropriate constitutive models for use in crash-worthiness evaluation.     

Standard Uncertainty Evaluation for Dynamic Tensile Properties of Auto-Body Steel-Sheets

This paper is concerned with the standard uncertainty of the true stress–true strain curve as the tensile properties of auto-body steel sheets at intermediate strain rates ranged from 1 to 100 s^?1. A procedure to obtain true stress–true strain data is properly designed for the experiment and data acquisition. An analytic model is then established to evaluate the standard uncertainty of the measurand. The measurand in this case is the true stress which is a function of the input quantities: the tensile load; the initial length, the thickness and the width of a specimen; and the deformed length of a specimen. Sources of uncertainties of the input quantities are evaluated for the high speed tensile test with their associated sensitivity coefficients. Uncertainty of the stress data acquired is also considered in the procedure of the fast Fourier transform (FFT) smoothing process used to remove unnecessary signals acquired from experiments. Image analysis using a high speed camera is carried out to measure deformation of the specimen during high speed tensile tests with proper uncertainty evaluation. A combined standard uncertainty is evaluated from the uncertainties of the input quantities as well as the influence factor for the true stress of auto-body steel sheets at intermediate strain rates. Consequently, the true stress–true strain data are obtained with proper standard uncertainty evaluation.     

Annular Pulse Shaping Technique for Large-Diameter Kolsky Bar Experiments on Concrete

The goal of this study is to design a novel annular pulse shaping technique for large-diameter Kolsky bars for investigating the dynamic compressive response of concretes. The purpose of implementing an annular pulse shaper design is to alleviate inertia-induced stresses in the pulse shaper material that would otherwise superpose unwanted oscillations on the incident wave. This newly developed pulse shaping technique led to well-controlled testing conditions enabling dynamic stress equilibrium, uniform deformation, and constant strain-rate in the testing of a chosen concrete material. The observed dynamic deformation rate of the concrete is highly consistent (8 % variation) with the stress in the specimen well equilibrated confirming the validity of this new technique. Experimental results at both quasi-static (10^?4 s^?1) and dynamic (100 s^?1, 240 s^?1) strain rates showed that the failure strength of this concrete is rate-sensitive.     

Integral-based constitutive equation for rubber at high strain rates

High-speed experiments were conducted to characterize the deformation and failure of Styrene Butadiene Rubber at impact rates. Dynamic tensile stress–strain curves of uniaxial strip specimens and force–extension curves of thin sheets were obtained from a Charpy tensile impact apparatus. Results from the uniaxial tension tests indicated that although the rubber became stiffer with increasing strain rates, the stress–strain curves remained virtually the same above 280 s⁻¹. Above this critical strain rate, strength, fracture strain and toughness decreased with increasing strain rates. When strain rates were below 180 s⁻¹, the initial modulus, tensile strength and breaking extension increased as the strain rate increased. Between strain rates of 180 and 280 s⁻¹, the initial modulus and tensile strength increased with increasing strain rates but the extension at break decreased with increasing strain rates. A hyper-viscoelastic constitutive relation of integral form was used to describe the rate-dependent material behavior of the rubber. Two characteristic relaxation times, 5 ms and 0.25 ms, were needed to fit the proposed constitutive equation to the data. The proposed constitutive equation was implemented in ABAQUS Explicit via a user-defined subroutine and used to predict the dynamic response of the rubber sheets in the experiments. Numerical predictions for the transient deformation and failure of the rubber sheet were within 10% of experimental results.     

Dynamic Tensile Testing of Soft Materials

Determination of dynamic tensile response of soft materials has been a challenge because of experimental difficulties. Split Hopkinson tension bar (SHTB) is a commonly used device for the characterization of high-rate tensile behavior of engineering materials. However, when the specimen is soft, it is challenging to design the necessary grips, to measure the weak transmitted signals, and for the specimen to achieve dynamic stress equilibrium. In this work, we modified the SHTB on the loading pulse, the equilibrium-monitoring system, and the specimen geometry. The results obtained using this modified device to characterize a soft rubber indicate that the specimen deforms under dynamic stress equilibrium at a nearly constant strain rate. Axial and radial inertia effects commonly encountered in dynamic characterization of soft materials are also minimized.     

The Effect of Grain Size on Deformation and Failure of Ti<Subscript>2</Subscript>AlC MAX Phase under Thermo-Mechanical Loading

An experimental investigation was performed to analyze the effects of grain size on the quasi-static and dynamic behavior of Ti₂AlC. High-density Ti₂AlC samples of three different grain sizes were densified using Spark Plasma Sintering and Pressureless sintering. A servo-hydraulic testing machine equipped with a vertical split furnace, and SiC pushrods, was used for the quasi-static experiments. Also, a Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB) apparatus and an induction coil heating system were used for the dynamic experiments. A series of experiments were conducted at temperatures ranging from 25 °C to 1100 °C for strain rates of 10^?4 s^?1 and 400 s^?1. The results show that under quasi-static loading the specimens experience a brittle failure for temperatures below Brittle to Plastic Transition Temperature (BPTT) of 900–1000 °C and large deformation at temperatures above the BPTT. During dynamic experiments, the specimens exhibited brittle failure, with the failure transitioning from catastrophic failure at lower temperatures to graceful failure (softening while bearing load) at higher temperatures, and with the propensity for graceful failure increasing with increasing grain size. The compressive strengths of different grain sizes at a given temperature can be related to the grain length by a Hall-Petch type relation.     

Shear Testing of Polypropylene Materials Analysed by Digital Image Correlation and Numerical Simulations

Distributions of shear strains and strain states (triaxiality) were analysed for two in-plane shear test fixtures (Iosipescu and V-notched rail), using digital image correlation and numerical simulations. Three different polypropylene-based materials (two talc-filled compounds and one unfilled homopolymer) were tested. The three materials behaved differently in the shear tests. Most notably, cracks developed in tension near the notches for the particle-filled materials, while the unfilled homopolymer did not fracture. There were also differences between the materials regarding strain localisation between the notches, strain rates vs. strain level (for a given cross-head speed), thickness change in the sheared section, and triaxiality. The yield stresses in shear, uniaxial tension and uniaxial compression showed pressure sensitivity. At least for equivalent strain rates below 1?s^?1, the strain rate sensitivity of the yield stress was approximately the same in these three stress states. The stress?Cstrain curves obtained with the two methods were quite similar for these materials. There were some differences between the methods regarding the ease of mounting and aligning specimens, the complexity of specimen deformation patterns, and the uniformity of the shear strain distribution between the notches.     

Anisotropic Hardening of Sheet Metals at Elevated Temperature: Tension-Compressions Test Development and Validation

New test equipment has been developed to measure the in-plane cyclic behavior of sheet metals at elevated temperatures. The tester has clamping dies with adjustable side force to prevent the sheet specimens from buckling during compressive loading. In addition to the room temperature experiment, cartridge type heaters are inserted in the clamping dies so that the specimen can be heated up to 400 °C during the cyclic tests. For the strain measurement, a non-contact type laser extensometer is used. In order to validate the newly developed test device, the tension-compression (and compression-tension) tests under pre-strains and various temperatures have been performed. As model materials, the aluminum alloy sheet which exhibits a large Bauschinger effect and the magnesium alloy sheet which exhibits different amounts of asymmetry under cyclic loading are used. The developed device can be well-suited to measure the cyclic material behavior, especially the anisotropic and asymmetric hardening of light-weight materials.     

Analysis of nonisothermal tensile tests using measured temperature distributions

Finite element modeling (FEM) of nonisothermal sheet tensile tests has been performed. The effect of deformation-induced heating was incorporated into an isothermal FEM program in two ways: (1) an experimentally measured temperature distribution was used to modify the plastic response of each element and (2) adiabatic heating was enforced by setting net heat production in each element equal to the work of deformation. For a specimen with a 1% taper, these models predict up to a 7% reduction in ultimate elongation for adiabatic tests relative to isothermal ones. These heat transfer conditions were approached at strain rates greater than 10^−2/s and less than 10^−4/s respectively. Comparison of these models with experiment suggests that the two extreme approximations can be used, except for a relatively narrow range of rates, to provide good first-order estimates of the heating effect on ductility without the need for cumbersome self-consistent heat transfer calculations. For mild steel sheet specimens tested in still air, the critical strain rate range is near the typical testing rate, making interpretation of standard tests difficult.     

Design of an Impact Loading Machine Based on a Flywheel Device: Application to the Fatigue Resistance of the High Rate Pre-straining Sensitivity of Aluminium Alloys

This paper presents a device that has been designed for tensile loading at medium impact rates (up to 10³ s^–1) and for performing either interrupted or failure tests. This machine allows us to apply prescribed pre-straining to the specimen, and then apply subsequent loading histories such as impact fatigue. Two specimen loading systems are considered, which make it possible to carry out tests with various ranges of force and various durations of time. A multi-CCD camera system is triggered by a chosen threshold from the force signal. The system is dedicated to the displacement measurement and gives both qualitative and quantitative information about the stretching mechanism leading to fracture. To illustrate the performance of the device, experimental results concerning impact tensile tests at a strain rate of about 300 s^–1 are presented, as well as consecutive impact-fatigue tests on two aluminium alloys.     

Microscale Experiments at Elevated Temperatures Evaluated with Digital Image Correlation

The methods of uniform heating and resistive (Joule) heating for microscale freestanding surface-micromachined thin metal film specimens were evaluated by a combination of full-field strain measurements by optical microscopy/Digital Image Correlation (DIC) and microscopic infrared (IR) imaging. The efficacy of each method was qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated with the aid of strain fields and IR-obtained temperature distributions along 850 nm thick freestanding microscale specimens subjected to uniaxial tension while heated by each method. The strain and temperature fields were quite uniform in experiments carried out with uniform specimen heating except for minor end-effects at the specimen grips. However, the resistively heated specimens showed highly uneven temperature distribution varying by 50°C along the 1,000 μm specimen gauge length. This high temperature gradient resulted in strain localization and 40% reduction in yield and ultimate tensile strengths of resistively heated specimens compared to the uniformly heated ones. Therefore, it is concluded that resistive heating is not a reliable method for conducting microscale temperature experiments with metallic films.     

A study of localisation in dual-phase high-strength steels under dynamic loading using digital image correlation and FE analysis

Tensile tests were conducted on dual-phase high-strength steel in a Split-Hopkinson Tension Bar at a strain-rate in the range of 150–600/s and in a servo-hydraulic testing machine at a strain-rate between 10^?3 and 10⁰/s. A novel specimen design was utilized for the Hopkinson bar tests of this sheet material. Digital image correlation was used together with high-speed photography to study strain localisation in the tensile specimens at high rates of strain. By using digital image correlation, it is possible to obtain in-plane displacement and strain fields during non-uniform deformation of the gauge section, and accordingly the strains associated with diffuse and localised necking may be determined. The full-field measurements in high strain-rate tests reveal that strain localisation started even before the maximum load was attained in the specimen. An elasto-viscoplastic constitutive model is used to predict the observed stress–strain behaviour and strain localisation for the dual-phase steel. Numerical simulations of dynamic tensile tests were performed using the non-linear explicit FE code LS-DYNA. Simulations were done with shell (plane stress) and brick elements. Good correlation between experiments and numerical predictions was achieved, in terms of engineering stress–strain behaviour, deformed geometry and strain fields. However, mesh density plays a role in the localisation of deformation in numerical simulations, particularly for the shell element analysis.     

Large Strain Shear Compression Test of Sheet Metal Specimens

A hybrid experimental-computational procedure to establish accurate true stress-plastic strain curve of sheet metal specimen covering the large plastic strain region using shear compression test data is described. A new shear compression jig assembly with a machined gage slot inclined at 35° to the horizontal plane of the assembly is designed and fabricated. The novel design of the shear compression jig assembly fulfills the requirement to maintain a uniform volume of yielded material with characteristic maximum plastic strain level across the gage region of the Shear Compression Metal Sheet (SCMS) specimen. The approach relies on a one-to-one correlation between measured global load–displacement response of the shear compression jig assembly with SCMS specimen to the local stress-plastic strain behavior of the material. Such correlations have been demonstrated using finite element (FE) simulation of the shear compression test. Coefficients of the proposed correlations and their dependency on relative plastic modulus were determined. The procedure has been established for materials with relative plastic modulus in the range 5?×?10^?4?<?(E _p /E)?<?0.01. It can be readily extended to materials with relative plastic modulus values beyond the range considered in this study. Nonlinear characteristic hardening of the material could be established through piecewise linear consideration of the measured load–displacement curve. Validity of the procedure is established by close comparison of measured and FE-predicted load–displacement curve when the provisional hardening curve is employed as input material data in the simulation. The procedure has successfully been demonstrated in establishing the true stress-plastic strain curve of a demonstrator 0.0627C steel SCMS specimen to a plastic strain level of 49.2 pct.     

高温高应变率下材料拉伸性能测试的一种新方法

为了实现高温环境下材料高应变率动态拉伸实验技术,将分离式Hopkinson杆直接拉伸装置中试样与拉杆的螺纹连接形式变成楔形连接形式,并加装了气动同步装置系统。这样,在对试样加高温时,能使靠近试样的入射和透射杆端处于较低温度。当撞击管向传递法兰运动时,气动同步装置瞬间拖动透射杆和试样,使两者之间的间隙为零,此时沿入射杆传递的入射波同时对试样拉伸加载。经实验验证,此方法可以有效实现材料高温高应变率拉伸加载。