Damage and fracture prediction of plastic-bonded explosive by digital image correlation processing

By digital correlation processing of Scanning electronic microscopy (SEM) images, the paper presents the deformation and damage analysis of an energetic material—the plastic-bonded explosive (PBX) on mesoscopic scale. The analysis is made by observing the deformation field resulted from the digital image correlation (DIC) processing of the images corresponding to the loading steps and comparing with the surface profiles of the composite material so as to visualize the matter damage near a preset crack. The results show that the local deformation disturbance can reveal the material damage even happened underneath the specimen surface. The strain distribution in the front of the preset crack, can be used to predict the propagating route of the microcrack initiated from the tip of the pre-crack, which is related to the splitting fracture of the granular-based composite under compressive loading.