Shock waves occur in a material when it is subjected to extreme pressure and temperature changes in a very short time. This is commonly observed in applications when a material is subjected to high speed impact. The need to design advanced materials resistant to shock damage has driven the research into the material's response to shock waves from the nano- and micro-meter scales to the large application scale. This grant, co-funded by the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), supports fundamental research into the multiscale response of the material when subjected to shock loading. It will provide new knowledge on how shock waves interact with material features at the micro and nano scales leading to deformation and failure at the macroscale. The research will accelerate the design of advanced materials with superior shock resistant properties for n aerospace, automotive, infrastructure and defense industries. Additionally, the project will provide opportunities to educate and train graduate and undergraduate students in the interdisciplinary areas of materials science, computational mechanics, and applied physics and mathematics through research in the laboratory. The PI will also engage in outreach activities related to science and engineering to K-12 students through university programs.
Shock response of the material is multiscale in nature, introducing defects such as voids and dislocations at the microscale and cracks and plastic deformation at the macroscale. This work develops a concurrent multiscale method, with coexisting atomistic and continuum domains, to study shock wave propagation through a material and its interaction with material microstructure. State of the art concurrent multiscale schemes are unable to capture high speed dynamic processes such as shock waves and moving atomistic regions. The framework uses a control volume based moving-window scheme, where the atomistic domain follows a moving shock wave, to circumvent issues with current state of the art schemes. Using this new framework, the work will study microstructural evolution, shock induced defect generation, and the influence of microstructural features such as grain boundaries on shock resistance properties, e.g., spall strength. The framework will be systematically validated against existing experimental data on shock induced defect generation available in the literature.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
