Acknowledgements

A part of this research has been performed with the financial support of the Gramat Research Center (CEA-Gramat). The author is grateful to Dr. Eric Buzaud (CEA-Gramat) and Dr. Christophe Pontiroli (CEA-Gramat) for their sound technical and scientific advice. The quasi-static characterization in [6, 31, 32, 40] has been perfomed in Department of Continuum Mechanics and Structural Analysis of University Carlos III of Madrid. The author is grateful to Profs. Ramon Zaera and Angel Arias and to the Spanish Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnologı´ (Project MAT2002-03339), to the Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid (CCG06- UC3M/DPI-0796) and to the Délégation Générale pour l'Armement (DGA/France) for their financial support. SHPB dynamic experiments have been performed in the LMS (Laboratoire de Mécanique des Solides, Palaiseau, France). The author is grateful to Prof. Gérard Gary and Philippe Chevallier for their helpful assistance and technical support, and Prof. Patrick Le Tallec, director of the LMS, for the warm welcome.
