Shock response of concrete, fibre concrete and ultrahigh performance concrete

A range of concrete types, representing commercially important formulations, were characterised under shock loading and release, using a large-bore single-stage light-gas gun. The plate impact experiments used a wave reverberation technique and an array of optical velocimetry probes to measure Hugoniot data and the subsequent release states for shocks from 2 to 11 GPa. The use of multiple velocimetry probes enabled quantification of the variation in particle velocity arising from the heterogeneous nature of concrete. Four types of concrete were investigated; a regular concrete, a fibre reinforced concrete using poly-propylene fibres, fibre concrete with steel fibres and, lastly, ultra-high performance fibre-reinforced concrete. Despite the compositional complexity, and range of quasi-static compressive strengths and reinforcement methods, the average Hugoniot data were remarkably similar between compositions.