International Journal of Impact Engineering 48 (2012) 107e115

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International Journal of Impact Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijimpeng

On designing structures for extreme environments

Neil K. Bourne
AWE, Aldermaston, Reading, Berkshire RG7 4PR, United Kingdom

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Structures designed for extreme environments must be designed not only for the magnitude of the load
Received 25 March 2011 that they will experience, but also time for which that load acts upon them. At the core of the problem
Received in revised form lies the loading impulse experienced by materials and the operating deformation mechanisms that are
20 November 2011
excited. Our experience of materials’ physics, gathered by investigating response to mechanical loads, has
Accepted 21 November 2011
suggested a series of descriptive constructs within which we build our picture of behaviour. This paper
Available online 30 January 2012
suggests a framework by which to interpret data collected on the response of metals. It suggests that
strength is a quantity that decays over time and that fundamentally approaches zero in the limit of
Keywords:
Extreme
infinite time. Controlling this decay is the business of engineering, to design structures that will survive
Shock in the environments for the time windows of importance.
Metals physics Crown Copyright Ó 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Impulse
Akrology

1. Introduction environments and longer service lifetimes without failure [3]. To

Materials and structures are loaded to extremes in everyday
environments and across nature. The loadings are both static and
dynamic; static high pressure exists at the centre of all massive
objects within the cosmos, as a result of the gravitational forces that
drive matter to agglomerate over time. This pressure exerts forces
on condensed materials, driving structural change and forming
new states which differ from those familiar at ambient conditions
on the surface of the Earth [1]. The speed with which the loading
occurs drives these changes but also heats the material to high
temperature as a result of the work done by the impulse and this
too takes materials to new extremes to which they must respond.
The shock wave represents the most rapid application of
compression to a solid, vaporizing the material in the ultimate case.
The physics of shock processes also controls earthbound explosive
effects, as well as carving Earth’s morphology. These concepts
govern complex geophysical processes which can also be decon-
structed to illustrate principles of these extreme loading modes [2].
Materials are central to every one of the technologies available
to meet performance requirements in a range of mechanical
extremes. In transportation, future vehicles will require lighter
weight components with increased strength and damage tolerance
to decrease fuel consumption. Next-generation nuclear fission
reactors require materials capable of withstanding higher
temperatures and higher radiation flux in extremely corrosive
E-mail address: neil.bourne@mac.com.
counter security threats, defence agencies require the technological
means to field protection for the populace against terrorist attack
and to protect critical facilities against human or atmospheric
extremes. Finally, exploitation of deep sea or space environments
demands technologies constructed from materials capable of
withstanding the range of operational conditions found in these
locations [3].
This paper aims to explain the principal mechanisms that
reorder a material’s structure and changes the mechanical and
physical properties it exhibits. Such a material may be a metal,
polymer or a brittle solid; it may also be reactive. Whilst each of
these cases deserves discussion in its own right this paper will
concentrate on metal deformation. Understanding the mechanisms
at work and the mathematical descriptions of the behaviour
observed, allows the principles of material response to be used to
design engineering structures and to do so requires a means of
choosing materials and selecting tests to track response. These
steps are necessary to iterate to a design that can respond under
extremes of loading. Finally the structure itself will respond to
loadings with defined responses which integrate the effects on
components experienced as the impact proceeds.
An individual engineering design problem may be decomposed
into a series of steps allowing the response of metals to be pre-
dicted or a material chosen for use in a particular environment. The
first step in the process requires the characterization of the
impulsive load to which the metal is subject. This defines the
mechanical threat to which the material must respond. Delivery of

0734-743X/$ e see front matter Crown Copyright Ó 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijimpeng.2011.11.011
108 N.K. Bourne / International Journal of Impact Engineering 48 (2012) 107e115
this to a target then allows the material response to be tracked
using suitable sensors. This process will be illustrated with exam-
ples of metal response mechanisms to incident impulses in what
follows.
2. Mechanisms
Materials may fail by a variety of deformation modes. These are
generally a suite of mechanisms grouped into an integrated form to
define the various processes. Each takes different times to act on
the material since there is a single or an integrated set of operating
deformation mechanisms operating at any one time. In order of
temporal duration they may be listed as; impact, yielding, thermal
shock, fracture, shear failure, buckling, creep, fatigue, corrosion,
fouling and wear. In each case the process acts over longer times
and the results apply over a larger region of space. The impact
phase overcomes the strength of a material to begin the processes
of inelastic flow; plasticity in metals. Yielding occurs when the
stress reaches a threshold at which plastic flow starts to occur. This
process occurs at lower levels as time progresses since the material
substructure is developing over time. Thermal shock represents an
instantaneous load but such insults are not considered further here.
Fracture represents a later part of the process where (in metals)
ductile failure occurs in tension with the creation of new free
surface. Once localization of deformation has occurred within
a material, a plastic zone can act as a hinge which allows structural
collapse of components where a large part of the bulk stays in the
elastic state. Finally creep processes at long time scales represent
the flow of the material under all the previous failures where the
strength has been rendered less again by virtue of the time for
which the material has been left. The other mentioned mechanisms
take longer and involve other (e.g. chemical, corrosion) insults and
while what is discussed here applies in a general sense, individual
details are specific to the mechanism.
Let us first look at the deformation of crystalline solids under
mechanical loading. The initial mechanisms operating do not break
bonds and thus may be regarded as compression in a purely elastic
state as the first planes of atoms within a microstructure compact.
The unit cell minimizes its potential energy and if it can rearrange
interatomic packing at this stage, a denser phase may quickly form
around nucleation sites within the structure. In regions where the
material has no point or larger defects, the lattice responds with its
theoretical strength, controlled only by the forces due to inter-
atomic bonding within the atomic environment [4]. This initial
phase occurs regardless of loading amplitude since some motion is
imparted to the first layers of the solid at the start of the process
when a mechanical insult is applied.
Local deformation can begin at inhomogeneities within the
lattice, and nucleation of slip, via dislocations occurs at defect sites.
Slip along interatomic planes begins and plastic deformation is
established around the nucleation site. At later times interactions of
travelling dislocations will nucleate further line defects in crystal-
line domains which then proceeds under the shear stresses present
in the material behind the compression front [5]. These processes
transit the purely elastic state at the first moments of impact to
inelastic flow at a lower stress since work is expended in breaking
bonds to accommodate the applied strain. The defined plastic state
takes time to establish but once these processes have been
completed the descriptions developed using quasistatic loadings
from the developments of mechanics through from the nineteenth
century can be applied [6].
Slip is arrested by the interaction of dislocations with solid
particles (precipitates) or when they interact with one another
pinning their motion and locking crystals into states that resist
further slip within the lattice [7]. This makes deformation more
difficult, thus increasing the strength of the material. Once
unloading occurs such dislocation structures relax and the
remaining relaxation morphologies may be observed in samples
recovered from targets loaded in idealized experiments where
a square impulse is applied (see Fig. 1) [8e10].
The effect of structure on the observed plasticity results from
differences in classes that different elements adopt to stack the unit
cell. In general terms most metals (there are exceptions) adopt one
of the three principal stacking groups; face centred cubic (FCC),
body centred cubic (BCC) and hexagonal close packed (HCP). Slip of
planes of atoms requires the breaking of a number of bonds within
the lattice and the structure favours particular planes for slip within
grains. The integrated forces required to overcome the interatomic
bonding determine the Peierls stress for slip on close-packed
planes in particular unit cell geometries. Whilst BCC structures
have a large number of potential systems, there are no easily acti-
vated ones so that there is a greater energy required to start the slip
process reflected in a higher Peierls stress. This results in a high
density of dislocations and their rapid propagation in FCC struc-
tures, with low dislocation density and slower propagation speeds
in BCC metals.
Fig. 1 shows loading in three classes of metal up to 10 GPa
amplitude, each pulse lasting 1 ms. Different material classes show
differing characteristic behaviours behind the shock front; yet all
show shock strengthening with pressure up to ca. 30 GPa [11]. FCC
metals such as Cu and Ni harden (a), while pure BCC metals (Ta here
in b, but also Nb and W) soften over the microsecond taken for the
microstructure to develop (stress histories to the right). Tie6Ale4V,
composed primarily of the HCP a-phase, shows planar slip in the
square pulsed specimens. There were no twins when targets were
loaded to 5 GPa but in the 10 GPa pulsed samples about 3% of the
grains twinned [8,9]. Twinning is a rapid plastic process and this
results in the shear stress equilibrating quickly on loading as can be
seen in the stress histories to the right. Differences in the Peierls
stress show contrasting substructure evolution in the metals.
Materials with higher values have greater resistance to defect
motion in the lattice and show a greatly reduced ability to cross-slip
and to store additional line defects. Metals (such as Ta) that possess
higher Peierls stress, show restricted dislocation motion when
there is insufficient thermal activation (such as is found with short
impulses or at low temperatures). If twinning can occur, the shear
stress equilibrates rapidly as strain is accommodated by the plastic
processes [8].
In microstructures where defect densities are lower, disloca-
tions do not become close and thus do not lock to form barriers to
further motion. Crystal plasticity is composed of group atomic
interactions that are best treated to illustrate the nature of the
response with molecular dynamics (MD) [12], until effects from
second phases (which are on a larger dimension than can interact
within the shock front) become important. At this time, the stress
states become ill-defined within each phase until equilibration by
wave propagation has occurred within a representative micro-
structural volume element. Thus atomic interactions control this
length scale of deformation and plastic processes occur to relieve
the shear stresses applied to the crystal boundaries. The defect
length scale in this region is controlled by atomic scale point or line
defects found within the crystalline demains.
The microstructural scale has inhomogeneities at different
scales controlling processes which equilibrate by wave propagation
between new phases. One may consider the time taken for infor-
mation to travel from areas of differing impedance to interact with
processes within the crystal to define a temporal and a physical
boundary between scales within the material. The impedance may
be greater (second phase particulate inclusions) or lower (voids)
than the primary phase of the material under investigation. The
 N.K. Bourne / International Journal of Impact Engineering 48 (2012) 107e115 109

Fig. 1. Recovery of targets loaded in 1D strain; plate hits sectioned target from the rear, loading a sample recovered for metallographic analysis. Left: as received and TEM of
recovered microstructures from shock-loaded targets. Right: longitudinal and lateral (dashed) and shear stress components (solid) in (a) Ni, (b) Ta and (c) Ti64 loaded to 10 GPa for
1 ms. Details in [8e10].

wave propagation process may be modelled successfully by
considering equilibration between these different phases using
continuum quantities for each component along with transport
properties derived from continuum measurements of the phase.
Such mesoscale simulations using continuum hydrocodes solve
conservation of relations across component phases in the
composite microstructure. The continuum response can then be
reconstructed by reconstructing integral components by statistical
averaging across the defined areas relevant to the structure or
problem of interest. Such wave processes equilibrate stresses
within large parts of the structure but also localize deformation on
planes of principal shear determined by the geometry of the
problem and evolution of the strain field in the deforming solid.
Local regions of lower strength may begin to localize plastic
deformation and heat forming the onset of shear banding within
the solid. In dynamic tension (related to the shear applied to
microstructure) local failure will again localize at regions where
which will first nucleate and then grow voids within the material.
Thus the defect distribution at the mesoscale, determined by the
nature of the methods adopted in production, will characterize the
series of mechanisms which equilibrate stress on the one hand and
localize failure on the other. According to the material and its
properties, this deposition of plastic work within the solid may
localize deformation as operating kinetics play against thermal
conduction away from the deformation zone within the solid.
At greater length scales again the material has further surfaces
within, and when waves have travelled around the components of
the structure it has now adopted a defined stress equilibrated state
where local inhomogeneities and non-deforming regions obey the
defined mathematical assumptions of continuum mechanics. In
particular, critical mechanistic times for shear localization allow
plastic hinging to occur within the structure. This time is the
minimum that is required to plastically deform a local region but
the formation of a hinge is further determined by wave equilibra-
tion of the structure defining the shear state of the loading in
a defined geometry at nucleated shear sites. Once formed, the
morphology responds structurally with jointing around the local-
ized regions of plastic deformation induced in the equilibration
phase [6]. The structure slips as a homogeneous mass around the
hinges formed at regions of intense plastic deformation defined by
the wave phase in the material beyond this critical time and strain.
Having discussed a suite of mechanisms, tracking through
crystal deformation to structural mechanics, it is worth adding
times and corresponding length scales that one must resolve to
observe these processes in operation in representative single-phase
metals. Table 1 shows a suite of typical mechanisms with
110 N.K. Bourne / International Journal of Impact Engineering 48 (2012) 107e115

corresponding order of magnitude estimates of time scales for such
processes and length scales over which they operate. The times
themselves clearly vary markedly between metals of differing
structure and density and with the applied compression in indi-
vidual impulses so that these values are for ranking purposes only.
This is since the wave speeds that drive the faster mechanisms are
defined by the atomic mass of the atoms that are displaced. It is
possible to group the mechanisms listed into groups that act at
different times and scales and show that these are driven by the
defect distributions at each scale that exist in the material and the
structure constructed from it. For the purposes of this paper which
will focus on the response of a single-phase metal, these groupings
will be labelled nucleation mechanisms, inelastic flow, wave
equilibration and localization and a regime that is governed the
mechanics of the engineering structure.
Nucleation mechanisms operate at the atomic scale around
point or line defects within the material or by shearing the unit cell
to change the phase of the material. These processes have a relax-
ation time of order a nanosecond within the metal. If the threshold
for them to be activated is reached these will be the first operating
mechanisms within the solid during loading nucleating the
generation of dislocations and establishing inelastic processes
within the solid.
Once defects are activated, inelastic process can occur on atomic
planes around these sites and their propagation and interaction
determines the plastic flow relieving the stresses within the grain.
In some metals at later times, effects such hardening may occur
where the dislocation density is high and the resistance to slip is
low. These processes equilibrate strain states within crystals and
define a state for a crystalline element between lower impedance
boundaries which show disorder in the boundary regions.
The third scale relies on slower operating mechanisms accom-
panying processes driven by surface creation or deformation and
tracks the achievement of stress state equilibrium within the solid.
Alternatively strain localization occurs which increases plastic
work in regions deforming the material as well heating it. This
equilibration and localization regime achieves stress equilibrium
and defines slip boundaries within the solid.
Finally a demain is achieved in which the material is equili-
brated and plastic hinge and slip zones are defined. This regime is
defined here as the mechanics regime in which continuum
concepts can truly be applied within the material to determine
structural scales for design and analysis. Research by Dear et al. [13]
has shown that specimen dynamics during mechanical testing can
have significant effect on recorded material property evaluations.
In each regime, the temporal estimates for typical single-phase
metals indicated reflect the speed at which the mechanisms
operate. In the regimes where the microstructure is not
Table 1
Characteristic length and time scales for observing typical crystalline deformation
mechanisms in a single-phase metal after applying step compression loading at
t ¼ 0.
equilibrated, the connection to spatial scales comes through wave
speeds in the materials (which are of order thousands of m s
1 in
these metals).
3. Platforms
In order to investigate and characterize the operating mecha-
nisms for a particular material under a particular load, the defor-
mation of a target must be tracked with application of a defined
impulse which can be used to excite the deformation mechanisms
outlined above. Each impulse has some activation stress in order for
it to operate and some characteristic relaxation time determined by
the operating physics. In order for the process under investigation
to be complete in a particular experiment, impulses of greater time
than that of the mechanism will be required to observe the corre-
sponding deformation. If one is going to construct continuum
material models from observations in an experiment, the platforms
used to investigate each mechanism need to have suitable capa-
bility to deliver the correct impulses (amplitude and pulse length)
in order to observe the required response. The grouping of the
deformation mechanisms made on the basis of their regimes of
operation and described above can be related to the impulse
applied by individual platforms as well. Some isolate the nucleation
phase where the defects start atomic processes, others include the
inelastic flow phase where slippage of planes can occur to accom-
modate the applied strain. This is part of a wave-dominated phase
where equilibration occurs across the structure localizing defor-
mation to geometrical zones. Finally there is a mechanical loading
response where the structure with its component parts obeys
mechanics concepts around continuum features such as shear
zones or hinges.
There are several platforms used to investigate mechanical
response in the laboratory environment. They range from
compression presses found in most engineering laboratories to the
most intense laser platforms constructed in investigate nuclear
physics including fusion [14,15]. Table 2 lists a number of these
platforms and ranks them according to several parameters to
characterize their response. Quasistatic loading devices include
diamond anvil cells capable of achieving high pressure in small
(tens of microns) targets, as well as Hopkinson bars which extend
loading to the limit at which measurement can made of continuum
properties. This group of devices yields data concerning the
continuum loading of the material under investigation since in all
case stress states have equilibrated before data is extracted from
the deforming target. The other devices in the table work in the
wave regime where equilibration processes are underway. In the
case of single and two stage launchers (SSL and TSL) a step impulse
is applied to the impact plane. Z pinch loading applies a more
gradually rising stress impulse to target. In this mode different
mechanisms are accessed at different stress thresholds and proceed
with different kinetics, energy sinks and work done on the target.

Mechanism Representative
Table 2
time scale
Commonly used mechanical test beds. The table gives generic loading conditions for
Defect activation 100 ps each device.
Phase transformation 1 ns Nucleation
Twinning 1 ns P (GPa) Loading Pulse rise Target Impulse
Slip 10 ns Inelastic flow time (ms) (ms) (mm) (GPa ms)
Dislocation interaction 100 ns Large press 0.01 QS e 50 N
Pinning at boundaries 1 ms DAC 300 QS e 0.1 N
Void growth 1 ms Equilibration and Drop weight 0.1 100,000 10 50 10,000
Nucleation adiabatic shear band 10 ms Localization SHPB 0.1 100 10 5 10
Stress state equilibration 100 ms SSL 150 10 0 100 1500
Localization at plastic hinges 1 ms TSL 300 3 0 50 900
Buckling 1s Structural Z Sandia 500 0.1 0 10 50
Creep 10 s Mechanics Large lasers 1000 0.001 0 1 1
 N.K. Bourne / International Journal of Impact Engineering 48 (2012) 107e115
However the magnetic interaction may also be used to accelerate
plates to impact applying shock loading to the target [16]. In this
mode it can apply ca. 100 ns pulse loading and this is plotted as the
datum Z in Fig. 2. Finally laser pulses apply ns loading but to the
highest amplitudes. This overview of platform impulse delivery
shows the relative abilities of different platforms to excite defor-
mation mechanisms within a material. The impulse delivered by
launchers is considerably higher than the laser platforms although
the amplitude achieved is less. Thus only the highest thresholds can
be accessed by lasers although the impulse delivered can only
couple to nucleation processes within the lattice. The plastic state
achieved in materials with high defect concentration or within
liquids or gases allows determination of the equation of state
parameters using these platforms.
To design for an application where structures are fielded in
extreme environments requires a series of steps to be followed.
Firstly the mechanical insult itself needs to be defined in terms of
the amplitude and duration of the loading experienced. This
defines an impulse experienced by the structure during the event.
Each material has a potential suite of operating available defor-
mation mechanisms in response to that impulse which are trig-
gered by the event as it occurs. Knowledge of these responses for
a range of materials fielded in a device allows the design of
a structure optimized for an application. This includes suitable
material types for particular component geometries as well as
a range of jointing strategies between those components within the
structure. At the level of the device it is the defects at each length
scale within it that determine the strength of the whole. The
principle defects activated by the insult relate to the jointing
between components and then with the material during the load.
Both of these features must be understood in idealized tests before
design can occur successfully. This the construction of mathemat-
ical representations of the device response must include adequate
material characterization tests over the impulse range to be expe-
rienced including the correct stress amplitudes but also the oper-
ating kinetics in the deforming material.
Thus any test programme that wishes to cover a particular regime
of mechanical behaviour must view a target material as a body that
must be excited with pulses that isolate each kinetic effect in turn to
properly represent it within a mathematical description. Pulse
lengths of different duration at similar thresholds can then be used
to map out the material response and construct valid models over
the stress range applicable. In this view, each mechanism can be
investigated to determine its threshold for operation and its
Fig. 2. The impulse delivered by platforms to excite deformation mechanisms in
targets as function of pulse length compression is delivered for.
111
relaxation time for completion. Clearly if there are several mecha-
nisms operating simultaneously, then each occurs in parallel with
the other and dissipates energy at a rate determined by the nature of
the processes. In this model an idealized pulse applied to the
material is filtered by its properties so that the result output after
some travel through it can be deconvolved to deduce the material
mechanisms operating during the process. The measurement of
states with suitable sampling rate at varying locations within it is
thus a necessary part of the process which must be matched to the
nature and kinetics of the mechanisms operating. An ideal form for
a mechanical impulse in such an investigative process is a shock
pulse with defined amplitude and duration since is ensures activa-
tion of all processes present at its maximum stress level at the same
time. Thus input step with a defined duration is a necessary input
impulse for experiments designed to probe material mechanisms.
In order to determine the utility of experimental platforms in
order to match material models to deformation it is necessary to
find some means to characterize their usefulness for the derivation
of models to design structures for future use. To do so, a dimen-
sionless constant, F, has been introduced which offers a means of
determining the totality of the deformation mechanism [17]. It is
defined to represent the extent to which a mechanism is driven to
completion by a stress or temperature excursion during the time for
which the impulse is active in the following manner
trelax
F ¼ ; (1)
timpulse
where trelax refers to the characteristic relaxation time for the step
in the rate limiting process and timpulse is the length of the impulse
applied to the structure. Thresholds in stress, pressure or temper-
ature need to be exceeded in order that the mechanism is activated
and further when the critical process (since there will in general be
a suite of them) is complete long before the impulse releases back
to an ambient state, the stable final form will be an equilibrium
state of the material under loading. If this is the case F will be small
and the state will be defined. Conversely if the impulse is short
relative to the completion time of a mechanism assumed to act (or
the shortest available at that stress level) then F will be large and
the state observed will be transient and similar to the initial state of
the material at the start of the process.
Such a criterion can be used to rank experiments to derive the
quantities necessary to construct an equation of state for a material
since it measures the degree to which loading has reached an
equilibrium state within it. Thus it represents a litmus test of the
ability of an experiment to excite a response to investigate a process
on the one hand and provides a means of tailoring an impulse to
optimize a material’s properties for resisting dynamic deformation
on the other.
Fig. 3 shows the form of F for a series of impulse and relaxation
times. There is a region in which it exceeds one and one where it is
less than it which is represented as colored regions in the contour
map to the left of the figure. Individual characteristic times (from
Table 1) are used to indicate regions occupied by devices along the
ordinate whereas individual mechanistic groups are indicated
schematically up the abscissa. Since experiments aim to occupy
a space in which they are complete and F should be less than one,
the experiments sit below and to the right of the diagonal indicated.
An example shows wave equilibration and localization processes
which can be studied using launchers and the Hopkinson bar to
construct descriptions of the operating mechanisms.
The completion of processes defines a time scale which matches
to a length scale swept by a pulse. These are connected by some
propagation velocity which depends upon the process but is
limited in the fastest processes driven at the highest amplitudes by
112 N.K. Bourne / International Journal of Impact Engineering 48 (2012) 107e115
Fig. 3. F as a function of kinetic times for mechanisms and impulse times delivered by various platforms. The impulse and mechanism times are measure in ns.
a wave speed in the material. This region defines a minimum
volume element for the completion of the mechanism under
investigation. It also defines a voxel over which measurement must
be achieved within the loading time of the experiment. All
measurements of state evolution are integrated over some
temporal and spatial domains and account of these defines
necessary equipment and region sampled at the relevant scale.
Finally it is worth noting that the processes of scaling can be
assessed quantitatively using this methodology. Reducing the
geometrical size of a test also scales the loading impulse. Since
material deformation is a nested suite of operating mechanical
mechanisms, scaling will only be valid where particular mecha-
nisms relevant at one scale are reproduced at the lower one. If this
is not the case, the kinetics and amplitudes of the deformation will
not match those in the alternate case and the behaviours will not be
analogous. In particular, damage mechanisms will be seen to
occupy a defined length and time scale which relates to defect
activation and growth but which can be turned off by the incorrect
choice of impulsive loading.
4. Examples
At the shortest pulse lengths, metals respond to the nucleation
processes which start dislocation motion from defects at the lattice
scale and seed the rapid motion which twins grains to accommo-
date the strain applied at the impact face. In the later inelastic flow
phase, slip proceeds to relieve yet further shear stress. At later
times, second phase particles and grain boundaries can commu-
nicate and the stress equilibration processes within the target
proceed with attendant strain localization beginning within the
inhomogeneous material. In all these processes the shock impulse
heats the material by performing plastic work expended in the
compression of the target during the impulse. To illustrate these
mechanisms in action, processes occurring during the pulse
showing examples of deformation are presented. These provide
examples of pulse length effects in action but also that mechanisms
can be frozen at an incomplete stage by removal of driving shear
stress. This may be used to track the development of such processes
within the metals. Whilst it is not exactly the case, the assumption
that a mechanism can only be driven whilst a shear stress is applied
can be shown to be operating in the case of metals.
The first example examines plastic deformation within recov-
ered targets of copper after shock loading to two stress levels (ca. 30
and 60 GPa) [18]. Different platforms were used to compare
response at the same shock amplitudes with impulse durations of
1 ms for plate impact and 3 ns for laser loadings. In the experiments,
recovered targets were examined to identify a series of features in
the microstructures of loaded single-crystal copper targets. These
included stacking faults, twins, recrystallized regions and micro-
shear bands. The results showed dislocation structures and twin-
ning within the crystals regardless of the length of the loading
pulse. However, the recrystallization and micro-shear were not
present in the target subject to laser loading. Ranking mechanisms
describing the processes defining plasticity in metals (Table 1) has
shown representative times for dislocation nucleation and twin-
ning. This gives F around one for the laser case and the plate impact
case gives F  1. Clearly the mechanisms were complete in both
cases as seen in the recovered microstructures. However shear
banding was not fully developed in either case with F  1 in the
laser case and around five for plate impact loading.
Recrystallized regions in the recovered plate impact targets
reflect the greater energy deposited by the longer impulse over that
in the laser loading. The pulse length is ca. 5000 times longer in the
former case making the impulse delivered the same factor greater.
The consequent extra heating results in greater temperature rise
and thus much greater microstructural effect on cooling back to the
ambient state as observed in the grains in the recovered targets.
These pure FCC metals show dislocation substructures which
follow the development of the impulse as it loads the target. Since
these mechanisms are driven by the applied shear, when the pulses
are relieved, inelastic processes cease and the duration of the pulse
freezes the development of the plasticity observed in the
microstructure.
A second mechanism of importance relates to high-rate tensile
failure of a target by localization of deformation and growth of new
free surface at defects within the microstructure. Inception of new
voids growing from such sites is embodied in the nucleation and
growth model (NAG) [19]. Such a mechanism has a series of
sequential operating timescales with the nucleation phase followed
by growth of the void from its origin. As the duration of that pulse
becomes smaller, observed voids reduce as the time for the growth
phase is reduced. In a series of experiments two different pulse
durations, an order of magnitude different, were introduced to
 N.K. Bourne / International Journal of Impact Engineering 48 (2012) 107e115
cavitate SS316 at three different stress levels [25]. The void size was
observed to reduce until voids were barely visible in the target. The
measured tensile strength of the material starts to increase once
the point at which there is no free surface is reached. Other work on
copper using HE loading has shown that there was no evidence of
void formation but only intense sheared layers in the metal at the
location of the spall plane [19].
There has been considerable work over the years on the tensile
or dynamic spall strength of materials. It has been possible to trace
shock experiments conducted on pure aluminum, on different
platforms, across work published over many years [15]. The results
are collated and presented in Fig. 4. The dynamic tensile strength is
taken as is conventional for this field by recorded the height of pull-
back signals recovered from stress histories. These are plotted for
each tensile pulse length delivered to the target. It can be seen that
the nucleation and growth of voids is consistent with delivering
a signal which implies an constant value of tensile strength (given
that these were not the material or in the same preparation state).
There is an increase in the value recovered when the pulse length
drops below 10 ns and it rapidly grows larger as the shorter pulses
delivered by laser loading are approached. Further, the recovered
targets show no evidence of void nucleation and formation of spall
planes in the manner observed in the long pulse cases.
The plot collates experiments across all the different launchers
used to assemble the data that in turn deliver differing square
pulses into targets before wave interaction subsequently fails them.
Plotting the data as a function of the logarithm of the pulse dura-
tion, allows regions of the response to be assigned an F number for
the NAG mechanisms assumed to describe the spallation process in
ductile metals. The boundary between the two behaviours comes at
the 10 ns pulse length discussed above.
The point at which free surface becomes increasingly difficult to
create corresponds with F becoming large and this results in the
observed spall strength rising. This relates to the defect population
from which failure ensues at the mesoscale on the one part, but also
since the trade between energy of the surface created and work
done growing the void does not favour cavitation at this length
scale (of order 1 mm). If the pulse is sufficiently short that it cannot
open voids significantly, then the energy required to open a new
surface increases bounded by the theoretical shear strength of the
solid. This value is taken here to the shear modulus, G/2p, which, in
the case of aluminum, is ca. 4.5 GPa (the asymptote to the values
recorded at the smallest pulse lengths). Thus these short laser-
Fig. 4. Spall strength as a function of pulse length in pure aluminum [16].
113
induced impulses offer a means of accessing the limits of
strength in a material in a manner not possible using other tech-
niques [15].
The tensile failure of metals occurs on timescales which will
couple with whatever the dominating mechanical processes oper-
ating during the loading impulse are. The pulse interacts with
defect populations existing in the material in compression in its as
received state or induced as a result of interactions within the solid
due to inelastic processes resulting from the compressive drive. The
defect volumes at the atomic scale accessed as the pulse length
decreases are so small that the observed strength of the metal
approaches the theoretical strength as the pulse length tends to
zero. At the mesoscale the corresponding loading times access
nucleation and growth mechanisms which can fail the material at
a lower stress. At longer times again the failure moves from a wave
to a bulk dominated process and the surfaces of the metal and its
surroundings become significant. Localization occurs first within
the material at a population of sites and then appears within the
bulk resulting in necking of the target before subsequent ductile
fracture ensues. As timescales and the volume of material accessed
increase, tensile strength falls to lower and lower values as larger
defects in the material are accessed.
The onset of plasticity and localization in an FCC metal like
aluminum to increasing impulse duration has been tracked through
earlier examples. Finally, consider the response of a structure
constructed from aluminum (a tube) under the application of
a dynamic load from a dropping mass. In this case the processes of
plastic localization and buckling occur over a different series of
time and length scales which again follow similar behaviours
driven by physical mechanisms in the material.
The stress levels at later times required to fail the structure are
now very much less than the theoretical strength of the material.
Inertia is the single dominating factor which drives failure at
shorter times to require higher stresses than at later ones and the
forms of this will be described below for a simple example. In an
experimental and theoretical analysis, previous work has shown
that the axial failure of the cylinder was due to the yielding and
folding of the cylinder into a series of segments with discrete
geometry and features (Fig. 5) [20,21]. The cylinder yields at plastic
hinges and folds at these to accommodate the applied load. This
localization of plastic deformation into discrete zones allows strain
to be accommodated by buckling, inversion and splitting when
stress is applied to the cylinder. The accommodation of such large
strain however has many practical uses since it acts as an efficient
way to use deformation to absorb large amounts of energy in plastic
work in the cylinder collapse.
In the first moments, material interfaces are not accessible by
a volume element within the bulk and the strength of the material
is governed by an ever-greater accessed volume that evolves from
atomic scale effects to wave interactions between the mesoscale
defect structure over the first microsecond. As wave propagation
equilibrates the material state over the component volume, global
strain rate becomes defined for the deformation of a component.
The dislocation which propagates compression within the lattice is
replaced by a population of developing shear bands within the
structural component. As time progresses the mechanical defor-
mation proceeds to accommodate the imposed strain from the
drive. The deformation is controlled by the equilibration time for
the wave transmission through the elements of the structure and
these are observed as inertial effects within the components. This
inertia has microstructural effects observed in metals which affect
slip within the metallic lattice. A low dislocation density and high
Peierls stress makes slip in BCC metals a slower process than in FCC
materials where fast motion and tangling occur readily. This leads
to the observation of strain rate dependence in the strength in these
114 N.K. Bourne / International Journal of Impact Engineering 48 (2012) 107e115
Fig. 5. The plastic deformation of a cylinder crushed within a load frame (a) radial, (b) axial crush and (c) crushed cylinder; external diameter 51 mm and wall thickness 1.6 mm
[20,21].
two classes of materials which is different and reflected in different
constitutive descriptions to describe strength. The discussion that
follows assumes a regime for structural response in which the
timescales of the loading impulse are much longer than those of
elastic and plastic wave propagation in the structure.
This wave precursor phase results defines differences in the
time taken for a structure to respond to dynamic deformation, with
the controlling mechanical components occurring in the earliest
part of the compression. Thus it is these early processes which
define the progression to a final state of equilibrium. This is
reflected in Perrone’s rule which states that the single level of strain
rate which best characterises the process of deformation as a whole
is that which occurs in the initial stages of deformation.
The mode of deformation of the structure will thus be different
from the quasistatic case until stress state equilibration has
occurred within individual loaded components. At the micro-
structural length scale, wave equilibration between grains and
second phase particles must occur before a state of continuum
strain exists within the bulk. This substructure, known as the
mesoscale, refers not to a specific measurement scale such as
a micron for microstructure, but to one based on the dimension of
an inhomogeneity within the substructure which delineates the
regime at which three dimensional strain is observed for a loading
which is imposed as one-dimensional at the continuum. In this
respect it refers to the scale at which inhomogeneity is explicitly
considered. Equally, at the scale of elements of the macrostructure,
the compression must develop until mechanical deformation has
equilibrated to the state observed in quasistatic loading. This is
engineered through the action of inertial forces developed within
the structure by rapid acceleration which parts of it experience
during the impact. These mechanisms result in two behaviours
which have been ascribed by Calladine [20] to two classes of
structure. The dividing characteristic between these two groups is
the difference in the times required to establish stress state stability
in the loading direction (and uniform strain during the deforma-
tion). Mechanically this reflects the time (which is directly related
to the strain) to localize shear zones at positions within the struc-
ture, followed by the growth of motions in resolved planes
perpendicular to the loading direction, to accommodate the strain
imposed by the load. Further all of the lateral deformation must be
compatible with the motion of the falling mass during its retar-
dation [20]. In such as case it can be shown that the transverse
acceleration of structural components is independent of the
velocity of the impact and that a higher impact velocity will
produce a larger compressive plastic strain [20]. At some time into
the deformation the longitudinal compressive strain rate becomes
zero and a second phase begins in which transverse bowing
increases further by means of the rotation of plastic hinges until
eventually the motion ceases.
The time for stress state equilibration of a metal grain is tens of
nanoseconds, that of grains of different orientation or similar scale
defects of order hundreds of nanoseconds to a microsecond. The
equilibration of the stress state within the structural component in
the direction of the loading may take microseconds for a thin plate
and hundreds of microseconds for a rod, and once the stress state
has equilibrated and a strain rate has been defined for the
component, transverse accelerations develop shear localizations in
the structure and plastic hinges develop; these processes together
take tens of milliseconds. Finally the structure accommodates the
strain over hundreds of milliseconds until the stress state is
equilibrated with the incoming driver and the relative deformation
ceases. The stressestrain response of the structure under dynamic
load may be mapped to a stress-time one. At the earliest times and
the smallest strains the strength is the theoretical maximum of the
metal under load. After a microsecond it adopts the strength of the
microstructural volume element sampled. When wave equilibra-
tion occurs the stress state in the component is uniaxial stress and
yields at the flow stress of the metal. Finally the structure defines its
deformation mode with plastic hinges and the stress state required
is at a lowered state until it reaches a maximum locking strain or
the driving impulse is absorbed.
Fig. 5 shows deformation of a cylinder (a) radially and (b) axially.
The case illustrated in (b) requires a phase establishing plastic flow
in the cylinder before plastic hinges are defined. It may be con-
trasted with the analogous case in (a) where the same cylinder is
loaded radially, the plastic state is established within microseconds
and the response occurs at a constant rate with strain accommo-
dated by hinging. The latter deformation is classified by Calladine as
Type I behaviour for structural response and the former as Type II
[21]. Type II behaviour illustrates the transition between stress
state-limited and structure-limited response whilst in Type I,
structural response is attained very quickly and deformation occurs
uniformly at lower stress values. Application of the concepts
described earlier would define the relaxation time for acquisition of
this state to be the time required to reach this state and a load could
be conceived in which F > 1 for radial loading (a) but F < 1 for
a longitudinal loading (b) where the weight was arrested. Further
one can see from this example that a relaxation time for
 N.K. Bourne / International Journal of Impact Engineering 48 (2012) 107e115
a mechanism might equally be substituted for a relaxation strain
which the drive acting on the component might easily also be re-
expressed in terms of an applied strain.
These three examples of deformation in a pure FCC metal show
the ability of a solid to exhibit strength at its theoretical maximum
derived from that required to overcome the interatomic potential at
the bond scale in the first case, through to the buckling character-
istic of structural deformation modes at the laboratory scale. These
processes track localized deformation over fifteen orders of
magnitude in time scale and similar in length scale. The failure in
each case rests with the dimension and the scale of the defect at the
operating scale. It is here that one needs to address accurate
measurement techniques focused on the determination of the
critical scale of that at which failure will occur.
5. Conclusions
Plastic deformation in nature is the response of composite
structures to arbitrary mechanical and radiative loads. The
mechanical ones described here show that design at a particular
length scale must integrate the macroscopic response of processes
that equilibrate the stress state at that scale. This paper has
reviewed features of the response of metals to shock loading
impulses of differing amplitude and duration but also structural
response after wave equilibration. These modes share unifying
concepts which have been clarified by breakdown into operating
physical mechanisms. Thus engineering a structure to provide an
Integrated response must include all the mechanisms operating at
the length scale at which the design will operate. Conversely in
order to retain a structure for safe use, engineering must identify
the input impulses and control the responses that they excite.
In crystalline materials this integrated suite includes four classes
of mechanisms operating on differing time and length scales. These
include nucleation, inelastic flow, equilibration and localization,
and structural responses. In order to define the outcome of exper-
iments conducted to investigate these responses, a dimensionless
number, F, is introduced to track states over a representative
volume element at appropriate length and timescales. This
constant must be less than one in order that the experiment has
completely tracked the deformation to the completion of the
process. Each regime of behaviour operates in states defined within
specific length scales which have defined transitions operating to
take each to the next. The quantum-atomic transition is the first
defining the states of atomic structure which may be used to
describe the crystalline domain in which microstructure is defined.
Another such transition occurs between the atomic and the
mesoscales at which ordered crystalline phases map to the
agglomerates of crystalline structure (some with a differing phase)
within the material. Finally the mesoscale transits to the laboratory
scale where boundaries of a particular element or impedance are
defined, and the stress state within the material reaches an equi-
librium state. In each of these states the material is equilibrating to
reach equilibrium; by inelastic flow in the atomic state, by waves
equilibrating the stress state or by forcing localization at the
mesoscale, or by bulk structural response at the laboratory scale
leading to a hydrostatic state within the structure.
No one platform can address the time scales and length scales of
all operating mechanisms; rather response shows features of each
selecting differing mechanisms at each scale sampled. The whole
describes the mechanical response of natural processes and the
integrated suite of investigations maps processes across physics,
chemistry, materials’ science and engineering to describe the whole
gamut of behaviours tracked across physical science. To classify these
responses requires the definition of a field within which this process
can progress; to define an envelope of observations that makes
115
connections over phenomena and disciplines. A term is required to
unite these concepts; Akrology the science of the extreme [17].
Acknowledgments
These ideas have developed over my time working in this varied
field. I would particularly thank the referees who stimulated some
of the discussion on structural collapse in the text. I thank all of the
colleagues and students who have contributed particularly from
my groups in Cambridge, RMCS Shrivenham, Manchester and
across AWE. Neither could these ideas have progressed without the
many friends at the US national labs and academia who have dis-
cussed these concepts with me and I thank them for their patience.
In particular to Steve Reid to whom the papers in this volume are
dedicated. His patient help and guidance has assisted and encour-
aged a great many of workers in the area of impact mechanics
across the UK community and abroad. We hope he remains active
over the coming years and remains a pin of the community and the
field.
British Crown Copyright MoD/2012.
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