Impact of freeze recovery method on high-speed fracture in metal cylindrical shells

The freeze recovery method (FRM) is a crucial approach for investigating the high-speed fracture process of metal cylindrical shells under explosive loading. However, the precise impacts of the recovery process on the deformation and fracture behavior of such shells remain unclear, significantly constraining the widespread application of this method in high-speed fracture studies. This paper quantitatively evaluates the effects of the expansion contour, fracture mode, and damage state of intermediate shells at different stages of fracture development using a crack evolution simulation method and nondestructive crack detection technique. The recovered shell contour can effectively represent the free expansion contour of the shell at the equivalent moment, with an error of less than 4%. Impact induces tensile cracks on the outer wall of the shell, which leads to changes in the local fracture mode. A method of crack elimination and equivalence in the damage statistics of the recovered shell is proposed to address this effect. The recovered shell can characterize the damage evolution during free expansion at the equivalent moment after eliminating the influence of excess tensile cracks. Based on the principle of stress analysis and energy conservation, the formation mechanism of tensile cracks in the outer wall of the shell is explored, and the correlation between tensile cracks and recovery time is elucidated. The study shows that the impact of fracture damage caused by freezing recovery is gradually reduced over time. The improved freezing recovery method based on the hard recovery principle is successfully used to recover the multistage intermediate shell, meeting the demand for obtaining the transient physical model in the high-speed fracture field.