This book is the first of several volumes on solids in the Shock Wave Science and Technology Reference Library. This is a unique collection, and the library as a whole sets out to comprehensively and authoritatively cover and review at research level the subject matter with all its ramifications. All the chapters are self-contained and can be read independently of each other, though they are of course thematically interrelated.

Research in the field of shock physics and ballistic impact has always been intimately tied to progress in development of facilities for accelerating projectiles to high velocity and instrumentation for recording impact phenomena. The chapters of this book, written by leading US and European experts, cover a broad range of topics and address researchers concerned with questions of material behaviour under impulsive loading and the equations of state of matter, as well as the design of suitable instrumentation such as gas guns and high-speed diagnostics. Applications include high-speed impact dynamics, the inner composition of planets, syntheses of new materials and materials processing. Among the more technologically oriented applications treated is the testing of the flight characteristics of aeroballistic models and the assessment of impacts in the aerospace industry.

Both experimental and theoretical investigations make it clear that mesoscale materials, that is, materials at scales intermediate between atomic and bulk matter, do not always behave in ways predicted by conventional theories of shock compression. At these scales, shock waves interact with local material properties and microstructure to produce a hierarchy of dissipative structures, such as inelastic deformation fields, randomly distributed lattice defects, and residual stresses. A macroscopically steady planar shock wave is neither plane nor steady at the mesoscale. The chapters in this book examine the assumptions underlying our understanding of shock phenomena and present new measurements, calculations, and theories that challenge these assumptions. They address such questions as: - What are the experimental data on mesoscale effects of shocks, and what are the implications? - Can one formulate new mesoscale theories of shock dynamics? - How would new mesoscale theories affect our understanding of shock-induced phase transitions or fracture? - What new computational models will be needed for investigating mesoscale shocks?

Research in the field of shock physics and ballistic impact has always been intimately tied to progress in development of facilities for accelerating projectiles to high velocity and instrumentation for recording impact phenomena. The chapters of this book, written by leading US and European experts, cover a broad range of topics and address researchers concerned with questions of material behaviour under impulsive loading and the equations of state of matter, as well as the design of suitable instrumentation such as gas guns and high-speed diagnostics. Applications include high-speed impact dynamics, the inner composition of planets, syntheses of new materials and materials processing. Among the more technologically oriented applications treated is the testing of the flight characteristics of aeroballistic models and the assessment of impacts in the aerospace industry.

This book is the ?rst of severalSolids volumes in theShock Wave Science and Technology Reference Library. These volumes are primarily concerned with high-pressure shock waves in solid media, including detonation, high-velocity impact, and penetration. Thisvolumecontainseightarticles.The?rstthreedescriberecent, exciting advancesinthreeexperimentalareas: ultrashortshockdynamicsattheatomic and molecular scale, very-high pressure equations of state measurements using the Z accelerator, and failure waves associated with impact failure of brittle solids. The subsequent four chapters are foundational, covering eq- tionsofstate, elastic plasticshockwaves, continuumplasticity, andnumerical methods. The ?nal article describes recent progress in mesoscale modeling of heterogeneous reactive solids. The articles are each self-contained, and can be read independently of each other, though, of course, they are thematically interrelated. They o?er a timely reference, for beginners as well as professional scientists and engineers, coveringboththefoundationsandnewviewpointsofshockwavesinsolids, and includeburgeoningdevelopments.Thefollowingaresupplementarycomments on some of the outstanding issues described in this volume. For many decades the primary signi?cance of shock wave research in solids has been the determination of high-pressure equations of state (EOS) for weapons analysis, geophysics and astrophysics applications, as well as mat- ials science focusing on the synthesis of ultra-hard materials such as diamo