Design and application of an intermediate strain rate materials testing device

Intermediate strain rates are an interesting topic for many industrial sectors such as the automotive sector. Intermediate strain rates are important in the change of the material behavior and the material deformation process from low to high strain rates. However, due to experimental challenges, material characteristics at intermediate strain rates are rarely defined, creating a gap in the experimental data between low and high strain rates. One major challenge for experimental data in the intermediate strain rate region is the limitation of commercial load cells. Intermediate strain rate frequencies coincide with the natural frequency of these devices, which result in high noise. Therefore, new testing methods and experimental test data with intermediate strain rate loadings are required. In this study, an intermediate strain rate testing device is designed, produced and tested for three different materials: AA6061-T6, OFHC Copper and Polycarbonate. 3D Finite element simulations are conducted with LS – Dyna software for each material tests. Experimental and numerical results are given and compared to numerical simulations and literature data. Comparison of numerical and experimental results showed a good match between simulations and experiments. Furthermore, experimental data compared to literature showed less than 10% error in all tests.