Dislocation mechanics of shock-induced plasticity

The constitutive deformation behavior of copper, Armco iron, and tantalum materials is described over a range of strain rates from conventional compressive/tensile testing, through split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) test results, to shock-determined Hugoniot elastic limit (HEL) stresses and the follow-on shock-induced plasticity. A mismatch between the so-called Zerilli-Armstrong (Z-A) constitutive equation description of pioneering SHPB measurements for copper provided initial evidence of a transition from the plastic strain rate being controlled by movement of the resident dislocation population to the strain rate being controlled by dislocation generation at the shock front, not by a retarding effect of dislocation drag. The transition is experimentally confirmed by connection with Swegle-Grady-type shock vs plastic strain rate measurements reported for all three materials but with an important role for twinning in the case of Armco iron and tantalum. A model description of the shock-induced plasticity results leads to a pronounced linear dependence of effective stress on the logarithm of the plastic strain rate. Taking into account the Hall-Petch grain size dependence is important in specifying the slip vs twinning transition for Armco iron at increasing strain rates.