Abstract
Despite its fundamental importance for a broad range of applications, little is understood about the behaviour of metals during the initial phase of shock compression. Here, we present molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of shock-wave propagation through a metal allowing a detailed analysis of the dynamics of high strain-rate plasticity. Previous MD simulations have not seen the evolution of the strain from one- to three-dimensional compression that is observed in diffraction experiments. Our large-scale MD simulations of up to 352 million atoms resolve this important discrepancy through a detailed understanding of dislocation flow at high strain rates. The stress relaxes to an approximately hydrostatic state and the dislocation velocity drops to nearly zero. The dislocation velocity drop leads to a steady state with no further relaxation of the lattice, as revealed by simulated X-ray diffraction.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank B. Sadigh for developing a faster version of MDCASK and for help with the method to obtain mobile dislocation densities, G. Gilmer for help developing the code, W. Cai and V. Bulatov and especially M. de Koning for help developing the initial dislocation sources, and the MCR and Thunder computer teams for constant help and support. We would also like to thank P. Erhart, M. Meyers, M. Schneider, J. McNaney, J. Colvin, J. Stölken, M. J. Caturla, B. D. Wirth and M. Kumar for fruitful discussions and J. Aranibar, A. Caro, and W. J. Nellis for useful comments. For the LLNL authors, this work was carried out under the auspices of the US Department of Energy by the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract No. W-7405-Eng-48.
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Bringa, E., Rosolankova, K., Rudd, R. et al. Shock deformation of face-centred-cubic metals on subnanosecond timescales. Nature Mater 5, 805–809 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1735
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1735
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