Introduction to Shock Physics

This course will cover the basic foundations of Shock Physics. The course begins with a review of elastic-plastic behavior, the Rankin-Hugoniot jump equations and the introduction of the shock Hugoniot, in order to perform theoretical impedance matching analysis. The equations of state and constitutive relations are then introduced to form a thermodynamically complete description of one-dimensional shock loading behavior. These complete equations are then discretized and formulated into a tractable system of equations which are solved using KO, an open-source hydrodynamics code.

Students will be given a workbook for the course that includes the lecture notes as well as example problems and solutions. A few of these example problems will be worked out in class comparing theoretical impedance matching, computational and experimental results. Students are encouraged to work through the example problems during the course.

This introductory course is aimed at students who may be new to shock physics analysis or those in similar fields related to material behavior in extreme conditions.