| There presently exists a great body of work on the blast-relevant properties of metals, ceramics, and geomaterials. These materials have been extensively studied under shock-wave loading for the past 6 decades, and their shock behavior is generally well understood. Comparatively little is known about the shock and blast response of polymeric materials. Advanced polymer systems, such as the polyurethanes and polyureas, have recently shown promise in both ballistic armor and in blast-wave-mitigation applications, but the physics behind the shock performance of these materials is currently under debate. As a first step in understanding the behavior of these materials, and to optimize the performance of these systems, their properties under shock loading must be determined. This work develops a suite of optically-based, laboratory-scale experimental techniques to measure the response of these polymers to blast loading. These techniques are used to determine the blast response and shock Hugoniot of a polycarbonate, a polyurethane and a polyurea. The results compare well with data from previously-published full-scale tests. The optical lab-scale approach to blast testing developed here is also applicable to other transparent and semi-transparent materials, and has a more-limited applicability to opaque materials as well. |
