We investigate shock wave propagation in single-crystal Cu with large-scale molecular dynamics simulations. Plastic shock waves propagate via dislocation nucleation or growth. With decreasing particle velocity, a remarkable drop in plastic shock wave velocity relative to the linear shock velocity–particle velocity relation is observed in the elastic–plastic two-wave regime for different loading directions. This reduction can be attributed to the changes in the mechanisms of plastic shock wave generation/propagation, from the dislocation nucleation-dominant mode, to the alternating nucleation and growth mode, and to the growth-dominant mode. For weak shocks, the plastic shock advances at the speed of the growth of existing dislocations (below the maximum elastic shock wave speed), considerably slower than the dislocation nucleation front for strong shocks (above the maximum elastic shock wave speed).

Origins of plastic shock waves in single-crystal Cu

Many important physical phenomena are governed by intense mechanical shock and impulse. These can be used in material processing and manufacturing. Examples include the compaction or shearing of materials in ballistic, meteor, or other impacts, spallation in armor and impact to induce phase and residual stress changes. The traditional methods for measuring very high strain rate behavior usually include gas-guns that accelerate flyers up to km/s speeds over a distance of meters. The throughput of such experiments is usually limited to a few experiments per day and the equipment is usually large, requiring specialized laboratories. Here, a much more compact method based on the Vaporizing Foil Actuator (VFA) is used that can accelerate flyers to over 1 km/s over a few mm of travel is proposed for high throughput testing in a compact system. A system with this primary driver coupled with Photonic Doppler Velocimetry (PDV) is demonstrated to give insightful data in powder compaction allowing measurements of shock speed, spall testing giving fast and reasonable estimates of spall strength, and impact welding providing interface microstructure as a function of impact angle and speed. The essential features of the system are outlined, and it is noted that this approach can be extended to other dynamic tests as well.

A Rapid Throughput System for Shock and Impact Characterization: Design and Examples in Compaction, Spallation, and Impact Welding

Plate impact experiments were conducted to study the effects of peak shock stress and pulse duration on the spall response of fully annealed 1100 aluminum. The spall strength was observed to decrease as the pulse duration was increased from approximately 0.58 μs to 1.17 μs. Also, an increase in tensile unloading strain rate increases the spall strength. However, our results also show an increase in spall strength with increase in peak shock stress up to approximately 8.3 GPa, followed by a decrease in spall strength for higher shock stresses.

http://absimage.aps.org/image/SHOCK11/MWS_SHOCK11-2011-000083.pdf

Spall Response of 1100-O Aluminum

Investigation on the spallation properties and failure mechanism of selective laser melted Ti-6Al-4V alloy with heat treatment under shock load

Evaluation of copper spall response using Mie-Grüneisen equation-of-state parameters determined from molecular dynamics

The damage evolution and spall behavior of copper under complex shockwave loading conditions were investigated using plate impact experiments with conical targets. Sweeping tensile waves were generated by the interaction of the released waves that were reflected from the free surfaces of the impactor and the cone surface. From the free-surface velocity profiles measured by multi-channel velocimetry, the classic pull-back spall signals were observed in incipient and complete spallation experiments. The spall strength estimated from the pull-back velocity strongly depended on the loading path and the loading wave profile. Post-experiment analysis based on the soft-recovery technique revealed that the damage distributions were very different from the bottom to the top of the conical target, but the corresponding free-surface velocity data measured at different locations suggested that similar responses occurred, which indicated that the spall strength was the critical threshold stress of micro-void nucleation or early growth. The fractography analysis of the fracture surfaces showed that metal micro-spheres were scattered in deep dimples, which indicated that the increase in temperature due to local severe plastic deformation around the voids was important. With the same set of model parameters, the plate impact spallation experiments with plane and conical targets were simulated using a critical damage evolution model. A good agreement was obtained between the simulations and experiments, which demonstrated the model capabilities for predicting the spall responses of metals under complex shockwave loading.

Fengguo Zhang

Papers

Damage evolution and spall failure in copper under complex shockwave loading conditions