Fragmentation Process of Quartz Glass Spheres Impacting Rigid Wall

The high-speed gun is used to study the impact of quartz glass ball on rigid target plate. The crushing process and failure mode of the ball at different speeds are analyzed. When the impact velocity is lower than the critical failure velocity, the quartz glass ball rebounds from the target plate, and the rebounding speed is slightly below the original speed; when the critical speed is exceeded, the sphere exhibits a “compressed fracture zone–surface spalling zone–shear failure zone” failure structure; further increasing the collision velocity, the expansion of the shear failure zone causes the sphere to be fragmented into several “crescent” fragments. At higher impact speeds, the quartz glass ball collapses and spalls at a distance away from the impact end. Furthermore, the discrete element software is utilized to simulate the impact damage process of the sphere. The crushing of the sphere under high-speed collision can be divided into three stages: elastic compression, integral crushing, secondary impact. Before the ball breaks, the Hertz contact theory can describe its impact force well, but the crushing force is much smaller than the theoretical value due to the fracture unloading, and the deviation gradually increases with the increasing impact speed.