The Hopkinson pressure bar has been developed to calibrate and assess high g accelerometers’ capacity. The extreme caution is indispensable for performing calibration of severe characteristics, like the bearable super-high overload peak and wide duration of stress. In the paper, the Hopkinson bar calibrating system is being critically appraised. A limiting formula is deduced based on the stress wave theory. It indicates that the overload peak and duration of stress are limited by the elastic limit and wave speed of Hopkinson bar material. Both stress wave configurations in the form of linear ramp and cosine functions were designed theoretically to meet typical calibrating requirements. They were confirmed experimentally with the aid of the pulse shaping technique. Their corresponding calibration characteristics were analysed critically, and it was found that the cosine stress wave can achieve the values of acceleration peak or duration by π/2 times greater than those obtained with the linear stress wave. Finally, some suggestions are proposed for more extreme calibration requirements.

The paper presents the results of the analysis of the striker shape impact on the shape of the mechanical elastic wave generated in the Hopkinson bar. The influence of the tensometer amplifier bandwidth on the stress-strain characteristics obtained in this method was analyzed too. For the purposes of analyzing under the computing environment ABAQUS / Explicit the test bench model was created, and then the analysis of the process of dynamic deformation of the specimen with specific mechanical parameters was carried out. Based on those tests, it was found that the geometry of the end of the striker has an effect on the form of the loading wave and the spectral width of the signal of that wave. Reduction of the striker end diameter reduces unwanted oscillations, however, adversely affects the time of strain rate stabilization. It was determined for the assumed test bench configuration that a tensometric measurement system with a bandwidth equal to 50 kHz is sufficient