This book presents a set of basic understandings of the behavior and response of solids to propagating shock waves. The propagation of shock waves in a solid body is accompanied by large compressions, decompression, and shear. Thus, the shear strength of solids and any inelastic response due to shock wave propagation is of the utmost importance. Furthermore, shock compres sion of solids is always accompanied by heating, and the rise of local tempera ture which may be due to both compression and dissipation. For many solids, under a certain range of impact pressures, a two-wave structure arises such that the first wave, called the elastic prescursor, travels with the speed of sound; and the second wave, called a plastic shock wave, travels at a slower speed. Shock-wave loading of solids is normally accomplished by either projectile impact, such as produced by guns or by explosives. The shock heating and compression of solids covers a wide range of temperatures and densities. For example, the temperature may be as high as a few electron volts (1 eV = 11,500 K) for very strong shocks and the densification may be as high as four times the normal density.

Research in the field of shock physics and ballistic impact has always been intimately tied to progress in development of facilities for accelerating projectiles to high velocity and instrumentation for recording impact phenomena. The chapters of this book, written by leading US and European experts, cover a broad range of topics and address researchers concerned with questions of material behaviour under impulsive loading and the equations of state of matter, as well as the design of suitable instrumentation such as gas guns and high-speed diagnostics. Applications include high-speed impact dynamics, the inner composition of planets, syntheses of new materials and materials processing. Among the more technologically oriented applications treated is the testing of the flight characteristics of aeroballistic models and the assessment of impacts in the aerospace industry.

Research in the field of shock physics and ballistic impact has always been intimately tied to progress in development of facilities for accelerating projectiles to high velocity and instrumentation for recording impact phenomena. The chapters of this book, written by leading US and European experts, cover a broad range of topics and address researchers concerned with questions of material behaviour under impulsive loading and the equations of state of matter, as well as the design of suitable instrumentation such as gas guns and high-speed diagnostics. Applications include high-speed impact dynamics, the inner composition of planets, syntheses of new materials and materials processing. Among the more technologically oriented applications treated is the testing of the flight characteristics of aeroballistic models and the assessment of impacts in the aerospace industry.

This book presents a set of basic understandings of the behavior and response of solids to propagating shock waves. The propagation of shock waves in a solid body is accompanied by large compressions, decompression, and shear. Thus, the shear strength of solids and any inelastic response due to shock wave propagation is of the utmost importance. Furthermore, shock compres sion of solids is always accompanied by heating, and the rise of local tempera ture which may be due to both compression and dissipation. For many solids, under a certain range of impact pressures, a two-wave structure arises such that the first wave, called the elastic prescursor, travels with the speed of sound; and the second wave, called a plastic shock wave, travels at a slower speed. Shock-wave loading of solids is normally accomplished by either projectile impact, such as produced by guns or by explosives. The shock heating and compression of solids covers a wide range of temperatures and densities. For example, the temperature may be as high as a few electron volts (1 eV = 11,500 K) for very strong shocks and the densification may be as high as four times the normal density.

This book introduces the core concepts of the shock wave physics of condensed matter, taking a continuum mechanics approach to examine liquids and isotropic solids. The text primarily focuses on one-dimensional uniaxial compression in order to show the key features of condensed matter’s response to shock wave loading. The first four chapters are specifically designed to quickly familiarize physical scientists and engineers with how shock waves interact with other shock waves or material boundaries, as well as to allow readers to better understand shock wave literature, use basic data analysis techniques, and design simple 1-D shock wave experiments. This is achieved by first presenting the steady one-dimensional strain conservation laws using shock wave impedance matching, which insures conservation of mass, momentum and energy. Here, the initial emphasis is on the meaning of shock wave and mass velocities in a laboratory coordinate system. An overview of basic experimental techniques for measuring pressure, shock velocity, mass velocity, compression and internal energy of steady 1-D shock waves is then presented. In the second part of the book, more advanced topics are progressively introduced: thermodynamic surfaces are used to describe equilibrium flow behavior, first-order Maxwell solid models are used to describe time-dependent flow behavior, descriptions of detonation shock waves in ideal and non-ideal explosives are provided, and lastly, a select group of current issues in shock wave physics are discussed in the final chapter.

Presenting some of the most recent results of Russian research into shock compression, as well as historical overviews of the Russian research programs into shock compression, this volume will provide Western researchers with many novel ideas and points of view. The chapters in this volume are written by leading Russian specialists various fields of high-pressure physics and form accounts of the main researches on the behavior of matter under shock-wave interaction. The experimental portions contain results of studies of shock compression of metals to high and ultra-high pressure, shock initiation of polymorphic transformations, strength, fracture and fragmentation under shock compression, and detonation of condensed explosives. There are also chapters on theoretical investigations of shock-wave compression and plasma states in regimes of high-pressure and high- temperature. The topics of the book are of interest to scientists and engineers concerned with questions of material behavior under impulsive loading and to the equation of state of matter. Application is to questions of high-speed impact, inner composition of planets, verification of model representations of material behavior under extreme 1oading conditions, syntheses of new materials, development of new technologies for material processing, etc. Russian research differs from much of the Western work in that it has traditionally been wider-ranging and more directed to extremes of response than to precise characterization of specific materials and effects. Western scientists could expect to benefit from the perspective gained from close knowledge of the Russian work.

Developments in experimental methods are providing an increasingly detailed understanding of shock compression phenomena on the bulk, intermediate, and molecular scales. This third volume in a series of reviews of the curent state of knowledge covers several diverse areas. The first group of chapters addresses fundamental physical and chemical aspects of the response of condensed matter to shock comression: equations of state, molecular-dynamic analysis, deformation of materials, spectroscopic methods. Two further chapters focus on a particular group of materials: ceramics. Another chapter discusses shock-induced reaction of condensed-phase explosives. And a final pair of chapters considers shock phenomena at low stresses from the point of view of continuum mechanics.