Electromagnetic Gauge Study of Laser-Induced Shock Waves in Aluminium Alloys

The laser-shock behaviour of three industrial aluminum alloys has been analyzed with an Electromagnetic Gauge Method (EMV) for measuring the velocity of the back free surface of thin foils submitted to plane laser irradiation. Surface pressure, shock decay in depth and Hugoniot Elastic Limits (HEL) of the materials were investigated with increasing thicknesses of foils to be shocked. First, surface peak pressures values as a function of laser power density gave a good agreement with conventional piezoelectric quartz measurements. Therefore, comparison of experimental results with computer simulations, using a 1D hydrodynamic Lagrangian finite difference code, were also in good accordance. Lastly, HEL values were compared with static and dynamic compressive tests in order to estimate the effects of a very large range of strain rates (10-3 s-1 to 106 s-1) on the mechanical properties of the alloys.