EXPERIMENTS ON DYNAMIC PLASTIC LOADING OF FRAMES

Tests are described on plane frames of mild steel and titanium (commercial purity) in which high intensity short duration pressure pulses were applied transversely to the beam member either uniformly over this member or concentrated at its center. The objective was to examine applications of two estimation techniques (upper bounds on deflections and the mode approximation technique) for major response features of pulse loaded structures at large deflections, taking account of strong plastic strain rate sensitivity. Loads over a range such as to cause final deflections up to about a third of the span were applied by detonating explosive sheet. Agreement between estimated and measured final deflections was often very good (generally conservative) but the intrinsic error of the mode technique was not observed as expected. © 1979.