Shocked materials at the intersection of experiment and simulation

Abstract

Understanding the dynamic lattice response of solids under the extreme conditions of pressure, temperature and strain rate is a scientific quest that spans nearly a century. Critical to developing this understanding is the ability to probe and model the spatial and temporal evolution of the material microstructure and properties at the scale of the relevant physical phenomena—nanometers to micrometers and picoseconds to nanoseconds. While experimental investigations over this range of spatial and temporal scales were unimaginable just a decade ago, new technologies and facilities currently under development and on the horizon have brought these goals within reach for the first time. The equivalent advancements in simulation capabilities now mean that we can conduct simulations and experiments at overlapping temporal and spatial scales. In this article, we describe some of our studies which exploit existing and new generation ultrabright, ultrafast x-ray sources and large scale molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the real-time physical phenomena that control the dynamic response of shocked materials.