2169 steel waveform measurements for equation of state and strength determination

Abstract

In support of efforts to develop multiscale models of a variety of materials, we have performed a set of eleven gas gun impact experiments on 2169 steel, a high-strength austenitic stainless steel. These experiments provided carefully controlled shock, reshock, and release velocimetry data, with initial shock stresses ranging from 10 to 50 GPa. Both windowed and free-surface measurements on samples ranging in thickness from 1 to 5 mm were made to increase the utility of the data set. Target physical phenomena included the elastic/plastic transition (Hugoniot elastic limit), the Hugoniot, any phase transition phenomena, and the release/reshock paths (windowed and free-surface), with associated strength information. The Hugoniot is nearly linear in U S-up space. Reshock tests with explosively welded impactors produced clean results, by contrast with earlier reshock tests with glued impactors which showed gap signatures. The free-surface samples, which were steps on a single piece of steel, showed lower wavespeeds for thin (1 mm) samples than for thicker (2 or 4 mm) samples. A preliminary strength analysis suggests the flow strength increases with stress from ∼1 GPa to ∼2.5 GPa over this range, consistent with other recent work but about 25% above the Steinberg model. © 2014 Author(s).