A Laboratory-Scale Instrumented Forging Hammer as an Intermediate Strain Rate Testing Device

Mechanical characterisation of metallic materials at intermediate strain rates is essential to calibrate and validate computational models for industrial applications such as high-speed forming processes i.e. hammer forging, blanking, forming, etc. The most common devices that perform medium high loading rate experiments are the servo-hydraulic universal testing machines Split Hopkinson bar systems. Here we analyse possibility employing an in-house designed constructed DirectImpact Drop Hammer (DIDH) material mechanical rates, ranging from 100 300 s -1 . To show suitability DIDH characterisation, uniaxial compression on S235JR structural steel conducted compared with finite element (FE) simulations performed elasticthermoviscoplastic model previously calibrated Pressure Bar (SHPB) tests.