As an editor of the international scienti?c journal Shock Waves, I was asked whether I might document some of my experience and knowledge in the ?eld of blast waves. I began an outline for a book on the basis of a short course that I had been teaching for several years. I added to the outline, ?lling in details and including recent devel- ments, especially in the subjects of height of burst curves and nonideal explosives. At a recent meeting of the International Symposium on the Interaction of Shock Waves, I was asked to write the book I had said I was working on. As a senior advisor to a...

Developments in experimental methods are providing an increasingly detailed understanding of shock compression phenomena on the bulk, intermediate, and molecular scales. This third volume in a series of reviews of the curent state of knowledge covers several diverse areas. The first group of chapters addresses fundamental physical and chemical aspects of the response of condensed matter to shock comression: equations of state, molecular-dynamic analysis, deformation of materials, spectroscopic methods. Two further chapters focus on a particular group of materials: ceramics. Another chapter...

The field of shock compression science has a long and rich history involving contributions of mathematicians, physicists and engineers over approximately two hundred years. The middle of the nineteenth century was an especially ac tive period with the contributions of Riemann, Rankine and Hugoniot, among others. The middle of the twentieth century saw another increase in activity re lated to shock compression of condensed matter as a result of military applica tions. It was also recognized that shock compression provided a means of sub jecting solids and liquids to extreme states of...

This volume concerns the fracture and fragmentation of solid materials that occurs when they are subjected to extremes of stress applied at the highest possible rates. The plan for the volume is to address experimental, theoretical, and com putational aspects of high-rate dynamic fracture and fragmentation, with emphasis on recent work. We begin with several chapters in which the emphasis falls on experimental methods and observations. These chapters address both macroscopic responses and the microscopic cause of these re sponses. This is followed by several chapters emphasizing modeling-the...

Since the 1950s shock compression research contributed greatly to scientific knowledge and industrial technology. As a result, for example, our understanding of meteorite impacts has substantially improved, and shock processes have become standard industrial methods in materials synthesis and processing. Investigations of shock-compressed matter involve physics, electrical engineering, solid mechanics, metallurgy, geophysics and materials science. The description of shock-compressed matter presented here, which is derived from physical and chemical observations, differs significantly from the...

This work marks a stage in the evolution of a scientific and technical field which has been developed by the Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique (CEA) over several decades. Many members of the staff of the CEA have won re nown in this field, and their work has brought it to the high degree of excel lence for which it is internationally recognized today. These scientists had to consider every aspect of the field, as it concerned: modeling, which has recourse to fluid thermodynamics, molecular phys ics, and chemistry; numerical evaluation, which relies on mathematical analysis and data...

Shock waves produce a wide variety of physical, chemical, mineralogical, and other effects in materials through which they pass. Since the beginning of civili zation, shock phenomena have been subjects of continuing interest, speculation, and enquiry. The interdisciplinary aspects of investigations of shock phenomena are especially noteworthy, and these investigations have been pursued by scien tists and engineers from a broad range of disciplines. Among the more novel and interesting investigations are those motivated by problems that arise in the Earth and planetary sciences. Such events as...

It is known that the Chapman-Jouguet theory of detonation is based on the assumption of an instantaneous and complete transformation of explosives into detonation products in the wave front. Therefore, one should not expect from the theory any interpretations of the detonation limits, such as shock initiation of det- onation and kinetic instability and propagation (failure diameter). The Zeldovich-Von Neuman-Doring (ZND) theory of detonation appeared, in fact, as a response to the need for a theory capable of interpreting such limits, and the ZND detonation theory gave qualitative...

It seems that there is no book that treats the measurement of the physical pa- rameters of explosives as its only subject, although limited information is avail- able in a number of books. Therefore, I have tried to bridge this gap in the lit- erature with this book. A large number of various physical parameters have to be determined ex- perimentally in order to test or characterise an explosive. Various physical principles have been applied for such measurements. Accordingly, a large number of different experimental methods exist, as well as various testing appa- ratuses and procedures. On...

This book presents a set of basic understandings of the behavior and response of solids to propagating shock waves. The propagation of shock waves in a solid body is accompanied by large compressions, decompression, and shear. Thus, the shear strength of solids and any inelastic response due to shock- wave propagation is of the utmost importance. Furthermore, shock compres- sion of solids is always accompanied by heating, and the rise of local tempera- ture which may be due to both compression and dissipation. For many solids, under a certain range of impact pressures, a two-wave structure...