Design and Development of an Integrated Compressive - Tensile Polymeric Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar Setup

Current finite element models of the human body lack accurate material properties of the soft tissues required to predict the pedestrian and occupant injuries during high speed automotive impacts. An accurate characterization of tensile and compressive properties of soft tissues in human body under high speed impact at high strain rates and their constitutive modeling is one of the significant interests. The conventional Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB) is modified in order to test soft tissues under dynamic compressive and tensile loading using single integrated polymeric SHPB setup. An integrated polymeric compressive - tensile SHPB setup is designed to convert a compressive SHPB into a tensile SHPB by changing the specimen holding and striker bar loading attachment. Some preliminary numerical simulations of polymeric SHPB under dynamic compressive loading were done using Lagrangian method in LS-DYANA/Explicit to study the non-linear transient behavior of foam as soft material. The shape of stress - strain curves obtained is non linear and concave up and validated with already published results.