Two dimensional plastic waves in quasi rate independent viscoplastic materials

The subject of this work is an analysis of the experimental biaxial Hopkinson bar technique when such a device consists of a cruciform tensile specimen surrounded by four very long elastic bars. Unlike commonly applied by-pass analysis which attempts to draw conclusions from behavior of elastic bars we attempt to take into account real plastic waves inside the specimen with few hundreds of reflections. A quasi rate-independent as well as a more general rate-dependent tensor function model for ASME 537 steel are applied. Plastic wave speeds non-existent in traditional elasto-viscoplasticity are analyzed. Some preliminary numerical results for symmetric and non-symmetric loading cases valid for initial and subsequent elastic ranges are given.