title: Dynamic buckling and fragmentation in brittle rods.
abstract: We present experiments on the dynamic buckling and fragmentation of slender rods axially impacted by a projectile. By combining the results of Saint-Venant and elastic beam theory, we derive a preferred wavelength lambda for the buckling instability, and experimentally verify the resulting scaling law for a range of materials including teflon, dry pasta, glass, and steel. For brittle materials, buckling leads to the fragmentation of the rod. Measured fragment length distributions show two peaks near lambda/2 and lambda/4. The nonmonotonic nature of the distributions reflect the influence of the deterministic buckling process on the more random fragmentation processes.
authors.affiliation: W. G. Pritchard Laboratories, Department of Mathematics, Penn State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA.
authors.forename: J R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Gladden
authors.forename: N Z
authors.initials: NZ
authors.lastname: Handzy
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Belmonte
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Villermaux