Explosive fragmentation of additively manufactured stainless steel

Properties of fragmentation from an explosively driven 316L stainless steel spherical shell section fabricated by a laser powder bed additive manufacturing process with minimal surface finishing are investigated. This shell is driven by an insensitive high explosive, resulting in high strain rate deformation (>8 × 103 s−1) and failure of the stainless steel. Photonic Doppler velocimetry measures the expansion rate; dynamic radiography and high-speed imaging capture the fracture behavior of the stainless steel. The fracture response of the additively manufactured stainless steel shell is compared to published experimental results on additively manufactured 316L stainless steel and conventionally manufactured wrought 316L and 304 stainless steel shell fragmentation. Despite preferred crack orientation, suggesting the influence of surface grooves on fracture time, fragment size is identical to that measured in a similar experiment on wrought 304 stainless steel. Further analysis indicates that the 316L additively manufactured stainless steel shell exhibits comparable spall strength and fragmentation toughness to conventionally manufactured stainless steel yet lower failure strain due to surface stress concentrations.