The split Hopkinson pressure bar has been a very popular and promising experimental technique for the study of dynamic behaviours of metallic materials for its easy operation and relatively accurate results, with three basic assumptions (Davies and Hunter, 1963; Bazle, Sergey and John, 2004): (a) waves propagating in the bars can be described by the one-dimensional wave theory, (b) stress in the specimen is uniform, and (c) specimen inertia effect and friction between specimen and bars can be negligible.