Graham Shock-Compression Science

R.A. Graham, Shock Compression of Solids as a Physical-Chemical-Mechanical Process, in Shock-Waves in Condensed Matter—1987 (edited by S.C. Schmidt and N.C. Holmes), Elsevier Science, Amsterdam, 1988, pp. 11-18. 

The fluid mechanics origins of shock-compression science are reflected in the early literature, which builds upon fluid mechanics concepts and is more concerned with basic issues of wave propagation than solid state materials properties. Indeed, mechanical wave measurements, upon which much of shock-compression science is built, give no direct information on defects. This fluids bias has led to a situation in which there appears to be no published terse description of shock-compressed solids comparable to Kormer s for the perfect lattice. Davison and Graham described the situation as an elastic fluid approximation. A description of shock-compressed solids in terms of the benign shock paradigm might perhaps be stated as ... 

There are numerous reviews of the various aspects of shock-compression science a large number of the references were collected and summarized in Davison and Graham [79D01]. Those general reviews summarized in Table 1.1 provide an extensive source of concepts and data on materials response, and the serious student should study them carefully. 

Table 1.1. General reviews of shock-compression science (after Davison and Graham [79D01]).

Fig. 4.2. The technique used to study the piezoelectric behavior of the crystals quartz and lithium niobate used controlled, precise impact loading. The impact velocity can be measured to an accuracy of 0.1%, leading to the most precisely known condition in shock-compression science (after Davison and Graham [79D01]).

The shock-compression induced structural phase transformation in iron from the low pressure bcc phase to the high pressure hep phase is one of the most visible problems studied in shock-compression science, and its discovery was responsible for widespread recognition of the capabilities of the high pressure shock-compression experiment. The properties of many shock-induced phase transitions are summarized in Duvall and Graham [77D01]. 

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