EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF THE SCALING LAWS FOR METAL PLATES STRUCK BY LARGE MASSES

An experimental investigation is presented into the geometrically simi lar scaling laws for circular plates impacted by cylindrical strikers with blunt ends travelling at velocities up to 5 m s-1 which produce l arge permanent transverse displacements and perforation in some cases. The plate dimensions have a scale range of four for the mild steel (s train rate sensitive) specimens and approximately five for the alumini um alloy (strain rate insensitive) specimens. The experimental results obey the geometrically similar scaling laws within the accuracy expec ted for such tests. It is observed that the impossibility of geometric ally similar scaling of the material strain rate sensitive effects app ears not to influence the plate perforation energies, at least within the range of experimental parameters studied in the present investigat ion.