Compression cracking of plastic spheres: a high speed photography study

Failure of brittle spheres under compressive loading, both quasi static and dynamic, is a technologically important problem. However, so far, neither the stress state in a loaded nor the failure process in understood clearly. In fact, because the process of the failure of a loaded sphere is very rapid, it has not been possible to follow it when making static observations. We have, therefore, carried out a high-speed photographic study using framing rates of up to 200,000 frames per second to follow the sequence of events when polished 12.7 mm diameter spheres of acrylic resin are fragmented using a low-velocity impact apparatus. The latter consist of a 5.7 kg hammer, which is allowed to drop on to the test sphere from a height of 1.3 m and the entire event of impact and ensuing fracture is photographed with a rotating mirror camera (C-4). Form numerous impact experiments it has been found that as the impact load increases gradually, plastic flow and flattering of the sphere occurs at the contact region. The size of the flattened region continuous to grow with increasing impact load and when this region becomes sufficiently large, usually one or two cracks initiate at the periphery of the contact rather than in the bulk of the sphere. The surface cracks then grow into the bulk of the sphere at velocities in the range of 600-800 m s/sup -1/. It is interesting to note these crack velocities are the maximum observed velocities in this material, but these are only approx. 0.8 of the Rayleigh wave velocity, which is the theoretically predicted maximum crack velocity in brittle materials. It is argued that in order to cause the catastrophic failure of a solid sphere, it is necessary to cause plasticity in it which then leads to the generation of tensile hoop stresses at the circle of contact between the sphere and platen. (author)