SOFT RECOVERY DEVICE FOR SHOCKED BRITTLE MATERIALS

A device elaborated to soft recover brittle specimens loaded with a ga s gun is presented. The target arrangement has been designed in order to minimize radial release waves in the specimen. A new design of proj ectile is proposed to avoid parasite recompressions due to further imp acts. The optimization of the whole system has been achieved by means of an iterative approach based on both 2D-calculations and experimenta tion. The efficiency of the system is demonstrated with the soft recov ery of quartzite samples for projectile velocities up to 825 m/s.