Fracture analysis of plastic bonded explosive by digital image correlation technique

Plastic-bonded explosive (PBX) is a kind of energy material used in military and civil engineering. It serves also as structures or components to sustain external loads. Safety and reliability of the material is of importance to prevent damage and fracture during both manufacturing and usage procedure. Digital image correlation technique was applied to analyze the deformation field of the material near crack tip. The specimen was loaded by uniaxial compression and a slot was preset at the specimen edge with 45degrees orientation. The speckle images were captured during the load and the surface patterns were matched by correlation computation to obtain the displacement components. The stress intensity factors of the crack tip were evaluated by the deformation in the near region of the crack. By the comparison of the strain field and the surface profile, the damage form of the material can be analyzed that showed brittle behavior with axial splitting fracture.