Impact Combined Shear-Compression Testing of Honeycombs Using a Rotatable Hopkinson Bar

This paper presents a new method based on the split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) to perform impact combined shear-compression test for cellular materials. For this purpose, a bevelled end is cemented to the input bar and the output bar are rotatable to be parallel to the inclined plane of the bevelled end. The system uses the friction between the specimen and the pressure bars to apply the combined shear compression loading on the honeycomb specimen. Such a testing method is validated by the simulation of the whole loading system (split bar + specimen) using ABAQUS code. It shows that this combined shear-compression test provides a quite accurate measurement. Tests on the 5052 aluminium honeycombs are performed. The shear stress-strain behaviour and the compressive behaviour are separated. The experiment result confirms previous testing results and reveals that the shear component will weaken the compressive strength of the honeycomb at high strain rate.