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SUMMARY:Highways and byways in the history of high rate mechanical testing
  - Stephen Walley\, PCS Fracture and Shock Physics Group\, Cavendish Labor
 atory
DTSTART:20200227T160000Z
DTEND:20200227T170000Z
UID:TALK136429@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Stephen Walley
DESCRIPTION:Up until the Industrial Revolution\, the dynamic mechanical pr
 operties of materials were only of importance in warfare\, particularly af
 ter the powder-driven gun was invented. With the invention of the steam en
 gine\, the explosion of steam boilers (which is similar to the explosion o
 f cannon) became a concern. When railways began to be built\, the lack of 
 knowledge of the dynamic properties of the iron alloys used in rails and r
 ailway bridges was understood to be a problem\, but no way of measuring th
 em was devised until the end of the 19th century. Ingenious mechanical (an
 d later electromechanical) methods of recording signals onto rotating drum
 s or moving smoked glass plates began to be developed from the middle of t
 he nineteenth century onwards. Optical/photographic methods of recording i
 nformation from dynamic experiments date from the 1890s. The rod-on-anvil 
 technique (later named after Taylor) was developed in France at the beginn
 ing of the 20th century but not mathematically analysed until the 1940s. T
 he Hopkinson pressure bar was invented just before the start of the First 
 World War and found to be useful in improving British artillery shells. It
  was then forgotten about until the Second World War when a two-bar versio
 n was developed for measuring the dynamic properties of soft materials suc
 h as explosives and polyethylene. 
LOCATION:TCM Seminar Room\, Cavendish Laboratory
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