Dynamic and fractal properties of SP-28 steel under high-speed loading conditions

Using an interferometric method to record the velocity of the free surface of a target subjected to two-dimensional shock loading, it is shown experimentally that the decrease in the compression pulse amplitude is due to the nonstationary nature of mesoscale processes — the amplitude decrease is progressively larger for higher rates of change of the variance of the mesoparticle velocity. It is shown theoretically that the loading rate influences the spallation strength of a material in a planar collision only if the variance of the particle velocity is nonzero. A fractal analysis of the spallation surfaces of steel samples is performed by quantitative fractography methods. An expression relating the fractal dimension of the spallation fracture surface and the variance of the mesoparticle velocity is derived. For typical values of the load pulse parameters for which back-side spallation occurs the fractal dimension agrees satisfactorily with the fractal dimensions for triadic Koch islands. Zh. Tekh. Fiz. 68, 43–49 (October 1998)