Plastic flow in shock-loaded silver at strain rates from 104 s-1 to 107 s-1 and temperatures from 296 K to 1233 K

The evolution of elastic-plastic shock waves in 99.9% purity silver samples of 0.127 to 2.0 mm thickness has been studied in a series of VISAR-instrumented planar impact experiments with initial sample temperature varied from 296 to 1233 K. The decay of elastic precursor wave at 933, 1173, and 1233 K temperatures is approximately inversely proportional to the square root of the propagation distance. The latter corresponds to the cubic dependence of initial plastic strain rate, ranged from 10(4) s(-1) to 10(6) s(-1), on the shear stress. At fixed strain rates, the flow stress grows linearly with the temperature but the dependence becomes stronger near the silver melting point, 1234 K. An analysis of the rise times of the plastic shock waves shows that for the same level of shear stress the plastic strain rate at the shock front is significantly higher than that at the top of the elastic precursor wave. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3642989]