The dimensionless failure criteria of elastic-brittle thin plates under pulse loadings

Abstract

The accurate prediction of structural failure is a critical issue in engineering applications. Due to the complexities of geometric nonlinearities, theoretical analysis is quite difficult, and experimental methods are both costly and time-consuming. Therefore, it is crucial to present failure criteria in a dimensionless form. In this study, a dimensionless analysis method is proposed for thin plates, aimed at determining the dimensionless loading intensity for elastic-brittle plates. The dimensionless loading intensity and duration are identified as a loading pair ($\xi$, ${\overline{t}}_d$), from which dimensionless pressure-duration (P-D) iso-damage curves are derived, incorporating all the effects of load, material, and geometry. The unified form of dimensionless P-D curves under different loading pulses is given and verified by theoretical, finite element (FE) and experiment results. On this basis, a standard dimensionless form of the P-I curve is further derived and verified. The applicability conditions for both dimensionless P-I and P-D curves are also discussed. These iso-damage curves enable standardized failure predictions for different working conditions, significantly reducing the cost of expensive experimental testing or calculation.