Impact of aircraft rubber tyre fragments on aluminium alloy plates: I—Experimental

This paper presents the first part of a study on the impact of rubber tyre fragments on aluminium alloy plates. The paper gives experimental measurements on the static and impact compressive and tension behaviour of specimens taken from the tyre tread in directions along and perpendicular to the tread direction. Data is expressed, here, in terms of average engineering stress-strain given the complex stress and strain distributions in the tyre tread. A series of tests are then described, in which representative tyre fragments (cuboids and ribbons) are fired at clamped 300 mm × 300 mm aluminium alloy plates at speeds of up to 135 m s−1 and at angles of 90°, 60°, and 30°. Plate impact results are given in terms of high-speed video data and in terms of strain gauge data from the plate. This data will then be used to develop a rubber model and a plate impact simulation using the explicit finite element code, DYNA, in the Part II paper.