Pii: S0749-6419(98)00003-5

-Recent studies of the initiation and propagation of shear bands using doubly or singly notched plates loaded asymmetrically have yielded valuable insight into this phenomenon. The same experiments also demonstrated that the shear banding mode of failure and a more brittle, "fracture", mode of failure can coexist in the impact-loaded specimens and transitions between the two modes were documented. However, different investigators have reported significantly different types of failure mode transitions. Due to the slightly different experimental configurations used in the studies, direct comparisons could not be made to analyze the causes of the different results. This investigation focuses on isolating the cause of this discrepancy by conducting experiments on the same material using both configurations simultaneously. The results suggest that the different types of failure mode transitions are caused by the different material properties used in the studies and the difference in specimen geometry does not seem to be primarily responsible for the differing behavior,;. © 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved