Experimental study of spall strength of silicon rubber with microspheres under shock-wave action

Abstract

Abstract In this work, porous media are studied using silicone rubber with glass microspheres as an example. There were investigated three types of silicon rubber samples featuring different concentrations and sizes of microspheres: non-porous silicon rubber, porous silicon rubber with calibrated glass microspheres and porous silicon rubber with glass microspheres having a wide range of sizes. The density of the samples was 0.99, 0.55 and 0.48 g/cm3, accordingly. Investigating spall strength under pulse tension shows that the destruction beginning threshold of the samples in question is quite low. For the non-porous sample, it is around 30 MPa, for the porous ones it is an order of magnitude lower. The spall plate does not come off the sample after the beginning of destruction. The ability of the free surface velocity to change in such a way is typical for materials with a low destruction threshold.