The Georgia Tech Dynamic Properties Research Lab facilities consist of a set of split Hopkinson bars, Gas Gun Facility, and Computational Resources.
The split Hopkinson bars provide material testing capabilities in compression, tension, torsion, torsion/compression and torsion/tension at strain rates of the order of 102 to 104 s-1. This facility is equiped with two Polytec OFV-3001 laser vibrometer systems and two OFV-512 optical fiber laser heads for measurement of surface velocities between 0 to 10 m/s. A set of Tektronix high speed digital oscilloscopes are available for data acquisition at sampling rates up to 50 nanoseconds per point.
The gas gun facility (a joint ME and MSE facility) allows material testing to be conducted at strain rates up to 106 s-1, under a range of multiaxial states of stress through normal and pressure-shear (inclined) plate impact. A state-of-the-art VISAR (Velocity Interferometer System for Any Reflector) for free surface velocity measurement is available. This system is capable for making four simultaneous measurements with a sensitivity of 2 m/s and a depth of field of 12 mm. Velocities in the range of 30-50,000 m/s can be measured. This facility is also equipped for internal stress measurement using PVDF stress gauges. High speed digital oscilloscopes are capable of sampling at rates of up to 4 million data points per second.
UNIX and WindowsNT-based computational facilities are available in the research group. There are two UNIX clusters, one consisting of a Sun Ultra30 server, a Sparc20 workstation and a Sparc2 workstation; the other is a Silicon Graphics cluster consisting of an Origin2000 server, an Octane workstation and an O2 workstation. The Origin2000 server has four processors, 4.5GB of RAM and 72GB of high speed hard disk space. The WindowsNT environment consists of a WindowsNT Server, and several WindowsNT workstations.