On the determination of the shock and steady state parameters of gelatine from cylinder impact experiments

For a soft body projectile striking a target or the shock loading of a soft body material, the determination of the interface shock pressure, shock speed and applied steady state pressures is important but has been hindered by technical challenges even with the use of sophisticated embedded pressure sensors in the target surface. Difficulties interpreting the results render the accuracies sometimes questionable or impossible to reproduce. Here we propose a simple impact experiment using a force sensor and an analysis procedure to derive the interface pressure from the force/time history. The results are compared to those obtained from shock Hugoniot and penetration equations. We came upon the presence of a dynamic pressure that is significantly higher than the expected stagnation pressure. This method could be used to determine and characterise the shock and steady state pressures of a wider range of materials under impact and shock loading conditions.