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The dynamic tensile strength of materials at load durations of a few microseconds or less is studied by analyzing the spall phenomena under shock pulse loading. The paper is devoted to discussing the methodology and capabilities of the technique to measure spall strength, its error sources, spall fracture of materials of different classes and the factors governing the high-rate fracture of metals and alloys under such conditions.

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Measurements of the dynamic tensile strength of aluminum and magnesium have been carried out by investigations of the spall phenomena over a wide range of temperatures, shock-wave intensities, and load durations. Free-surface velocity profiles were recorded with VISAR and used to provide the spall strength measurements. The initial temperature of samples was varied from room temperature to near the melting point. The peak compressive pressure in the shock waves was varied from 5 to 50 GPa for aluminum and from 2 to 10 GPa for magnesium. The load duration was varied by more than one order of magnitude. The free-surface velocity measurements showed a precipitous drop in the spall strength of preheated samples as temperatures approached the melting point. No significant influence of the peak pressure on the spall strength was observed. The strain-rate dependencies of the spall strength could be represented as power functions with a power index of 0.060 for aluminum and 0.072 for magnesium. Unexpectedly large amplitudes for the Hugoniot elastic limit of both aluminum and magnesium were observed at temperatures approaching the melting point.

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This article presents experimental results of the dynamic yield strength and dynamic tensile strength (“spall strength”) of aluminum single crystals at shock-wave loading as a function of temperature. The load duration was ∼40 and ∼200 ns. The temperature varied from 20 to 650 °C which is only by 10 °C below the melting temperature. A linear growth of the dynamic yield strength by more than a factor of 4 was observed within this temperature range. This is attributed to the phonon drag effect on the dislocation motion. High dynamic tensile strength was maintained over the whole temperature range, including the conditions at which melting should start in a material under tension. This could be an indication of the existence of superheated states in solid crystals.

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The evolution of elastic-plastic shock waves with the propagation distance has been studied in 99.99% purity aluminum and in annealed 6061 aluminum alloy. The free surface velocity histories of shock-loaded samples, 0.1–2.0 mm thick and with initial temperature from 296 to 932 K, have been recorded using velocity interferometer system for any reflector (VISAR). The measured amplitudes of the elastic precursor waves have been approximated by power functions of the propagation distance, and these data have been converted into relationships between the shear stress at the top of elastic precursor wave and the initial plastic strain rate. The latter was found to decrease from 106 to 104 s−1 over 0.1 to 2-mm precursor traverse, while the density of mobile dislocations corresponding to these strain rates varied from 2 × 108 to 5 × 106 cm−2. At fixed strain rates, the flow stress of aluminum grows linearly with temperature. An analysis of the rise times of the plastic shock waves has shown that, for the same level of shear stress, the plastic strain rate at the shock front is by an order of magnitude higher and the density of mobile dislocations is 2-3 times higher than their initial values behind the elastic precursor front.