Polymeric Hopkinson Bar-Confinement Chamber Apparatus to Evaluate Fluid Cavitation

Abstract

Mild traumatic brain injury associated with blast exposure is an important issue, and cavitation of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) has been suggested as a potential injury mechanism; however, physical measurements are required to evaluate cavitation thresholds. Modifications to a Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB) apparatus were investigated with the aim to generate localized fluid cavitation and measure the cavitation threshold of fluids. The proposed design incorporated a novel closed cavitation chamber to generate localized cavitation resulting from a reflected compression pulse, which was generated by a spherical steel striker and Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) incident bar. A numerical model of the incident bar was developed and validated with 24 independent tests (cross-correlation: 0.970–0.997), and this was extended to a numerical model of the apparatus including the chamber, validated with 27 independent tests (cross-correlation: 0.921) to predict the tensile fluid pressure in the chamber. Tests on distilled water were performed with comparable numerical results for the chamber strain (R2: 0.875) and chamber end-wall velocity (R2: 0.992). The pressure in the chamber was determined from the model to avoid introducing a nucleation site via a pressure gauge, and was verified with a first-order approximation showing good agreement (R2: 0.892). The 50% probability of cavitation for distilled water was −3.32 MPa ±3%, comparable to values in the literature. This novel apparatus, including a closed confinement chamber integrated with a polymeric SHPB apparatus was able to create localized fluid cavitation with loading comparable to blast exposure. Future studies will include the measurement of CSF cavitation pressure.