Deformation of thin plates subjected to impulsive load : Part III – an update 25 years on

In 1989, Nurick and Martin published two review papers on the deformation of thin steel plates subjected to impulsive air-blast loading. The state of the art has progressed significantly in the following 25 years, and this review paper restricts itself to experimental studies that investigate the response of monolithic metal plates subjected to air-blast loading generated by detonating plastic explosive. From the large number of experiments reported, it is shown that the failure progressions in circular and quadrangular plates are similar and can be adequately described by three “failure modes” – namely large plastic deformation (mode I), tensile tearing (mode II) and shearing (mode III) although the severity and location of these failures on the plates is primarily determined by spatial distribution of the blast loading across the plate surface, and that boundary conditions significantly influence the onset of shearing and tearing failures due to variation in the in-plane movement of the plate material. The non-dimensional analysis approaches used by Nurick and Martin have been expanded to include the effects of load localisation and stand-off distance, and show good correlation with the expanded sets of test data published since 1989. It is concluded that these approaches still hold merit as simple tools for evaluating the likely effect of a close proximity air blast load on a flat metal plate.