Origins of Shock-Compression Science

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 early scientific works concerning the presence of shock waves and the influence of explosions, impacts, and shock waves on matter. The earliest work, however, did not lead to a delineation of the phenomenon as a distinct scientific enterprise. This distinction rests with a group of visionary scientists assembled at Los Alamos for the development of the atomic bomb during World War II. Having learned the methods and developed the technology to explosively load samples in a precise and reproducible manner, they realized that they had in their hands, for the first time, the ability to study matter in an entirely new range of pressure. After several precursor publications beginning in 1955, the existence of the new scientific field was reported to the world in the classic work by Melvin Rice, John Walsh, and 

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In this chapter the scope of the subject the fluidlike deformation of shock-compressed solids modeling the shock as benign or catastrophic the origins of shock-compression science the pressure scale of events the plan of the present work. 

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