The dynamic materials team in MST-8

Team Leader: John Bingert

The team encompasses a spectrum of experimental and modeling programs that systematically quantify the influence of variables such as strain rate, temperature, stress state, processing microstructure, and alloy content on the constitutive behavior, damage evolution, fracture, and fragmentation of materials that include polymers, metals, and alloys.

The team is actively involved in developing and validating constitutive models describing the mechanical behavior of weapons materials including beryllium, uranium, and plutonium (part of the ASCI program). Experimental tools include gas guns, Taylor anvil facilities, and a Hopkinson bar, as well as orientation imaging microscopy.

Recent activities include research in the following areas:

• quantification of the influence of interstitial content and niobium alloy content on mechanical behavior of wrought uranium and uranium-niobium alloys, characterization and modeling of the influence of manufacturing on constitutive response, and support of the hydrotest program through constitutive data and models;
• investigation of the constitutive response of uranium-alloy as a function of stress state; and
• quantification of the influence of shock pre-straining on post-shock mechanical behavior, damage evolution, and propensity to strain localization/fragmentation.

A new avenue of research has been on quantification of the influence of temperature and strain rate on the constitutive response of structural polymers and binders in energetics.

Team Members

Team Leader: John Bingert
TSMs: Eric Brown, Carl Cady, Ellen Cerreta, Shuh-Rong Chen, George Gray, Veronica Livescu, and Phillip Rae
TECs:Tom Bell, Mike Lopez, Carl Trujillo
POST DOCs: Lisa Dougherty and Hakan Sencer

Documents

• Fracture & Damage Evolution in Polymers (LALP-06-084.pdf)