Scaling behavior of fragment shapes

TL;DR

This study investigates the shapes of fragments from shells under explosive and impact forces, revealing scaling laws and anisotropic characteristics that can improve space debris modeling.

Contribution

It introduces a combined experimental and theoretical analysis of fragment shapes, highlighting the self-affine nature and power law distribution of fragments from shell fragmentation.

Findings

Fragments range from isotropic to elongated shapes depending on cracking mechanisms.

Anisotropic fragments exhibit self-affine scaling behavior.

Fragment shape distribution follows a power law decay.

Abstract

We present an experimental and theoretical study of the shape of fragments generated by explosive and impact loading of closed shells. Based on high speed imaging, we have determined the fragmentation mechanism of shells. Experiments have shown that the fragments vary from completely isotropic to highly anisotropic elongated shapes, depending on the microscopic cracking mechanism of the shell-material. Anisotropic fragments proved to have self-affine character described by a scaling exponent. The distribution of fragment shapes exhibits a power law decay. The robustness of the scaling laws is illustrated by a stochastic hierarchical model of fragmentation. Our results provide a possible improvement of the representation of fragment shapes in models of space debris.