Development of a new testing equipment that combines the working principles of both the split Hopkinson bar and the drop weight testers

In the current work, a new high strain rate tensile testing equipment is proposed. The equipment uses a pendulum device to generate an impact load and a three-bar mechanism to bring that load to act upon a specially designed specimen. As the standard impact testing apparatus uses pendulum device and the well-known SHB high strain rate tester adopts the above-mentioned mechanism, the introduced equipment can be dealt with as an impact apparatus in which the base that supports the V-shape specimen is replaced with the three-bar configuration that the traditional SHB uses. In order to demonstrate the applicability of the new tester, virtual design tools were used to determine the most appropriate configuration for it. Then, a detailed design was created, and a full-scale prototype was produced, calibrated, instrumented and tested. The obtained results demonstrate that the new tester is capable of axially straining steel specimens up to failure at a maximum rate of about 250 s(−1), which is reasonable when compared with a more established high strain rate testers.