Strategies for Manipulating Shock Waves using Metallurgical Metamaterials

Recent research has shown the potential for exploiting volume reduction during phase transformations to manipulate shock waves. Volume-changing phase transformation in metals can be described as metastable crushing at the atomic scale, which can reverse transform upon unloading, is stable for finite-amplitude shocks, and occurs on the time scale of 10s of nanoseconds. Modifying the composition alters the transformation pressure. By constructing a sample with a gradient in composition, shock wave behavior can be controlled. However, most equation of state and transformation behavior has focused on pure metals; there is insufficient data to describe the behavior of alloyed metals, even for simple binary systems. In this work we use X-ray diffraction data collected during diamond anvil cell experiments on Fe-xMn alloys to determine the parameters for a phase transformation model as a function of Mn content. Through a finite element framework, we explored how Fe-xMn laminates with spatially varying composition can be used to achieve shock wave manipulation in 1-d shock waves.