Shock Recovery Experiments

The essence of a well-designed shock recovery experiment is to interrogate the residual structure-property relationships of a material, which has undergone a known uniaxial strain history under shock compression and then released back to ambient conditions without been exposed to collisions between planar free surface release waves and rogue edge radial release waves from lateral boundaries. Collisions between planar free surface release waves and rogue edge radial release waves can generate undesirable tensile stresses in the sample and, therefore, violate the uniaxial strain history essential for a successful shock recovery experiment. Therefore, all possible efforts must be utilized to trap rogue edge radial release waves emanating from lateral boundaries.