Nanoprecipitates and shock induced plasticity

This is work by Alexey Kuksin, Vladimir Stegailov, Genri Norman and Alexey Yanilkin (Joint Institute for High Temperatures, Russian Academy of Sciences) on the influence of nanoprecipitates on shock induced plasticity and subsequent fracture.

Animations show the propagation of weak (left) and strong (right) shock waves in an aluminum (grey atoms) single crystal doped with amorphous copper (yellow atoms) nanoclusters. Only atoms with broken symmetry in their local environment are shown (point defects, stacking faults, etc.) Only atoms in the rear half of the simulation box are visible (the cutting plane is marked). The final atomic structure in the strong shock case corresponds to the spallation stage and is colored according to potential energy of atoms. The visualization was done with the AtomEye program.