Plate-impact-driven ring expansion test (PIDRET) for dynamic fragmentation

A new experimental set-up mounted at the muzzle of a singlestage gas gun has been designed in order to study the fragmentation of metallic rings under dynamic radial expansion. This concept takes advantage of the quasi-incompressibility of HDPE whose radial flow under plate impact-like loading is used to apply a pressure boundary condition at the ring's inner surface. For the experimental configurations considered in the present work, the average strain rate in the ring reaches values close to 10⁴ s^-1. The repeatability and the reliability of the experiments are verified for rings made of steel and aluminium.