Oxford Researchers Recognised at BSSM Annual Conference

Professor Clive Siviour (Associate Head of Department, Infrastructure) was invited to give the prestigious BSSM Measurements Lecture this September.

The BSSM is a non profit making scientific, educational and promotional organisation to advance the knowledge of strain measurement, stress analysis and related areas of Experimental Mechanics. The BSSM's 14th International Conference on Advances in Experimental Mechanics took place at Queen's University Belfast from 10-12 September 2019.

His presentation 'Challenges and opportunities in high rate characterisation of soft materials' gave an overview of techniques developed in his group for the evaluation of the response of polymers and rubbers to impact loading; descriptions of these techniques can be found in two recent papers [1, 2].

DPhil student Akash Trivedi was invited to take part in the BSSM student paper competition, in which he was awarded first prize. The presentation, 'A novel modelling framework to predict the high rate response of soft materials: From soft polymers to particulate composites', described his novel approach to developing a model for impact behaviour of polymers using data obtained in simpler experiments that can be performed at lower speeds. The model is based on the principle that the behaviour of polymers under rapid loading is equivalent to that at low temperature and is described in a recently submitted paper [3].

[1] CR Siviour “High Strain Rate Characterization of Polymers” Proceedings of the 2015 APS Conference on Shock Compression of Condensed Matter, AIP Conference Proceedings 1793 (2017) 060029 (12 pp) doi: 10.1063/1.4971585

[2] CR Siviour & JL Jordan, “High Strain Rate Mechanics of Polymers: A Review”, J. Dynamic Behavior Mater. 2 (2016), 15-32 doi: 10.1007/s40870-016-0052-8

[3] AR Trivedi & CR Siviour, “A novel methodology for predicting the high rate mechanical response of polymers from low rate data: Application to (plasticised) poly(vinyl chloride)” submitted