Elastic precursor decay

Introduction of the surface-nucleation mechanism in numerical computation of elastic-plastic wave evolution leads to enhanced precursor attenuation in thin specimens, but not in thicker ones. Inclusion of dislocation nucleation at subgrain boundaries indicates that a relatively low concentration of subgrain boundaries ( 2/mm) and nucleation density (10"-10 m ) is sufficient to obtain predicted precursor decay rates which are comparable to those obtained from the experiments. These experiments are only slightly above the threshold necessary to produce enhanced elastic-precursor decay. 

These techniques have very important applications to some of the micro-structural effects discussed previously in this chapter. For example, time-resolved measurements of the actual lattice strain at the impact surface will give direct information on rate of departure from ideal elastic impact conditions. Recall that the stress tensor depends on the elastic (lattice) strains (7.4). Measurements of the type described above give stress relaxation directly, without all of the interpretational assumptions required of elastic-precursor-decay studies. 

J.R. Asay and Y.M. Gupta, Effect of Impurity Clustering on Elastic Precursor Decay in LiF, J. Appl. Phys. 43, 2220-2223 (1972). 

Y. Partom, Elastic Precursor Decay Calculation, J. Appl. Phys. 59, 2716-2727 (1986). 

Fig. 2.7. Elastic precursor decay in which elastic waves are observed to decrease in amplitude with propagation distance is a typical behavior. The data of this figure describe the behavior of crystalline LiF samples of different yield strengths (after Asay et al. [72A02]).

The formation and evolution of multiple waves becomes more complicated when chemical reactions or phase transitions occur. Volume decreasing phase transformations cause the pressure at point B in Figure 2 and Figure 7 to decrease with time. This common phenomenon is known as elastic precursor decay in elastic-plastic wave system. [9] The timescale for this pressure decay depends primarily on the timescale for the chemical reaction or phase transition that gives rise to the 2" wave. 

A typical shock-compression wave-profile measurement consists of particle velocity as a function of time at some material point within or on the surface of the sample. These measurements are commonly made by means of laser interferometry as discussed in Chapter 3 of this book. A typical wave profile as a function of position in the sample is shown in Fig. 7.2. Each portion of the wave profile contains information about the microstructure in the form of the product of and v. The decaying elastic wave has been an important source of indirect information on micromechanics of shock-induced plastic deformation. Taylor [9] used measurements of the decaying elastic precursor to determine parameters for polycrystalline Armco iron. He showed that the rate of decay of the elastic precursor in Fig. 7.2 is given by (Appendix)... 

The decaying elastic precursor is also studied in a number of single crystals... 

Calculations of this type are carried out for fee, bcc, rock salt, and hep crystal structures and applied to precursor decay in single-crystal copper, tungsten, NaCl, and LiF [17]. The calculations show that the initial mobile dislocation densities necessary to obtain the measured rapid precursor decay in all cases are two or three orders of magnitude greater than initially present in the crystals. Herrmann et al. [18] show how dislocation multiplication combined with nonlinear elastic response can give some explanation for this effect. 

The shock-induced micromechanical response of <100>-loaded single crystal copper is investigated [18] for values of (WohL) from 0 to 10. The latter value results in W 10 Wg at y = 0.01. No distinction is made between total and mobile dislocation densities. These calculations show that rapid dislocation multiplication behind the elastic shock front results in a decrease in longitudinal stress, which is communicated to the shock front by nonlinear elastic effects [pc,/po > V, (7.20)]. While this is an important result, later recovery experiments by Vorthman and Duvall [19] show that shock compression does not result in a significant increase in residual dislocation density in LiF. Hence, the micromechanical interpretation of precursor decay provided by Herrmann et al. [18] remains unresolved with existing recovery experiments. 

The thorough and persistent work on precursor decay (the dependence of Hugoniot elastic limit on propagation distance) of Duvall s Washington State University group was successful in demonstrating that precursor attenuation was due to both stress relaxation and hydrodynamic attenuation. Typical data on crystalline LiF is shown in Fig. 2.7. Observed plastic strain... 

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