Towards Standardising SHPB Testing - A Round Robin Exercise

The Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB) test, while widely utilised for high strain rate tests, has yet to be standardised. As an exploratory step towards developing a standard test method or protocol, a Round Robin test series has been conducted between four institutions: (i) Swinburne University of Technology, Australia (ii) University of São Paulo, Brazil, (iii) University of Cape Town, South African and (iv) Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Each institution prepared specimens from a metallic material, and provided batches of specimens from their chosen material to the other institutions. The materials utilised in this round of testing were commercially pure copper and aluminium, magnesium alloy and stainless steel (316 grade). The intent of the first exercise is to establish the consistency of SHPB test results on nominally identical specimens at comparable elevated strain rates, conducted by different laboratories following notionally similar test procedures with some freedom in data processing. This paper presents and compares the results of the first batch of tests for copper, identifying variations between results from different laboratories. The variation between different laboratories’ results for copper is suffciently small that there is confidence in the potential to develop a draft standard in future.