Shock loading of polymer foam

/images/foam1.jpg — The initial PMP foam sample with a lattice of spherical voids (1.44M atoms).

/images/foam2.jpg — The shocked sample, showing jetting of polymer fragments into the voids.

/images/mrs12.jpg — Cover of the May 2012 MRS Bulletin special issue on many-body potentials.

Work by Matt Lane and Aidan Thompson at Sandia to model the shock compression of all-atom polymer foams, using the ReaxFF potential to allow for dissociation of the polymer bonds. Their model captures the Hugoniot response of the foam in good agreement with experiment and DFT calculations.

The images show a PMP system with 1.44 million atoms, with a lattice of spherical voids. The initial sample is shown first; the shocked sample shows jetting of polymer fragments into the voids. These images were used on the cover of a special issue of the MRS Bulletin (May 2012) devoted to many-body potentials like ReaxFF.

Related publications

Shock compression of hydrocarbon polymer foam using molecular dynamics, J. M. D. Lane, G. S. Grest, A. P. Thompson, K. R. Cochrane, M. P. Desjarlais, and T. R. Mattsson, AIP Conf. Proc. 1426 (Shock Compression of Condensed Matter 2011), 1435 (2012). doi:10.1063/1.3686551
Computational Aspects of Many-body Potentials, S. J. Plimpton and A. P. Thompson, MRS Bulletin 37, 513 (2012). doi:10.1557/mrs.2012.96