Shock compaction of Al-based nanocrystal materials using an ion-beam device

An ion beam-driven shock loading device has been proposed to make dynamic compaction of non-equilibrium and nano-crystalline powders efficient. Different from the conventional gas/fire guns and the explosive detonation methods, the repetitive application of shock pressure pulse to target materials and the fine control of pressure pulse are both intrinsic features to the present approach. Since the generated plasmoid is electro-magnetically accelerated to launch the flyer, no limitation to flyer velocity can, in principal, be expected. The optical fiber technique was utilized to carry out real time measurement of copper flyer velocity. The efficiency was estimated to be about 6% for conversion from the accumulated energy in the condenser bank to the kinetic energy of a flyer. Al-based nanocrystal powders were used for dynamic compaction.