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Updated: Jun 12, 2026

A Method for Studying the Temperature Dependence of Dynamic Fracture and Fragmentation
Published on: June 28, 2015
Experimental analysis of lateral impact on planar brittle material
F P M dos Santos1, V C Barbosa, R Donangelo
1Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Cidade Universitária, CP 68528, Rio de Janeiro, RJ 21941-972, Brazil. filipepms@gmail.com
Abstract:
The fragmentation of alumina and glass plates due to lateral impact is studied. A few hundred plates have been fragmented at different impact velocities and the produced fragments are analyzed. The method employed in this work allows one to investigate some geometrical properties of the fragments, besides the traditional size distribution usually studied in former experiments. We found that, although both materials exhibit qualitative similar fragment size distribution function, their geometrical properties appear to be quite different. A schematic model for two-dimensional fragmentation is also presented and its predictions are compared to our experimental results. The comparison suggests that the analysis of the fragments' geometrical properties constitutes a more stringent test of the theoretical models' assumptions than the size distribution.
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