Abstract

The temperature rise associated with shock waves has not been extensively covered in the existing literature. The extreme conditions of a material under shock as well as the very brief window of time available to collect the temperature data mean that successful measurements thus far have been few and far between—and those available are in disagreement at higher shock pressures. This year, we have been working to develop ultra-fast temperature sensors that can be embedded in polymers (in this case PMMA ) dynamically compressed to several GPa, which provide data on the temperature rise within the timeframe of the shock. These sensors consist of thin-film thermistors (of gold or tungsten) designed to rapidly thermally equilibrate with the embedding polymer under the application of shock. The resistance data collected from the sensors allows for the calculation of the surrounding temperature.

In this talk I will review the results from our PMMA shock temperature experiments. These results will be compared with the data already available in the literature, and help resolve the longstanding discrepancies. They will also be compared with the polymer temperature predictions derived from group interaction modeling (as covered in David Williamson’s talk earlier this year), as well as with the results of heat conduction simulations conducted using finite element analysis.