Shock-recovery techniques

Samples are most frequently shock deformed under laboratory conditions utilizing either explosive or gun-launched flyer (driver) plates. Given sufficient lateral extent and assembly thickness, a sample may be shocked in a onedimensional strain manner such that the sample experiences concurrently uniaxial-strain loading and unloading. Based on the reproducibility of projectile launch velocity and impact planarity, convenience of use, and ability to perform controlled oblique impact (such as for pressure-shear studies) guns have become the method of choice for many material equation-of-state and shock-recovery studies [21], [22]. 

Influence of Shock-Wave Deformation on the Behavior of Materials 

Po and pF = density of driver at ambient pressure and under shock, 

C° = bulk sound speed in the compressed (shocked state) driver. 

Given simple centered flow conditions where the driver, target, and momentum trapping materials are the same, the minimum trapping width is given by [20] 

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The structure/property relationships in materials subjected to shock-wave deformation is physically very difficult to conduct and complex to interpret due to the dynamic nature of the shock process and the very short time of the test. Due to these imposed constraints, most real-time shock-process measurements are limited to studying the interactions of the transmitted waves arrival at the free surface. To augment these in situ wave-profile measurements, shock-recovery techniques were developed in the late 1950s to assess experimentally the residual effects of shock-wave compression on materials. The object of soft-recovery experiments is to examine the terminal structure/property relationships of a material that has been subjected to a known uniaxial shock history, then returned to an ambient pressure... 

In this chapter, we will review the effects of shock-wave deform.ation on material response after the completion of the shock cycle. The techniques and design parameters necessary to implement successful shock-recovery experiments in metallic and brittle solids will be discussed. The influence of shock parameters, including peak pressure and pulse duration, loading-rate effects, and the Bauschinger effect (in some shock-loaded materials) on postshock structure/property material behavior will be detailed. 

Micromechanical theories of deformation must be based on physical evidence of shock-induced deformation mechanisms. One of the chapters in this book deals with the difficult problem of recovering specimens from shocked materials to perform material properties studies. At present, shock-recovery methods provide the only proven teclfniques for post-shock examination of deformation mechanisms. The recovery techniques are yielding important information about microscopic deformations that occur on the short time scales (typically 10 -10 s) of the compression process. 

Deformed quartz samples obtained from shock-recovery experiments were generally investigated with TEM (transmission electron microscopy) to study their planar deformation features. Furthermore, several studies on the atomic-scale structure of diaplectic quartz glass have been carried out by using X-ray diffraction and IR (infrared) and Raman spectroscopy techniques. In the next section, some recent structural investigations of diaplectic quartz glass will be reviewed. 

Given the advanced state of wave-profile detectors, it seems safe to recognize that the descriptions given by such an apparatus provide a necessary, but overly restricted, picture. As is described in later chapters of this book, shock-compressed matter displays a far more complex face when probed with electrical, magnetic, or optical techniques and when chemical changes are considered. It appears that realistic descriptive pictures require probing matter with a full array of modern probes. The recovery experiment in which samples are preserved for post-shock analysis appears critical for the development of a more detailed defective solid scientific description. 

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