Shock compression response of high entropy alloys

In this work, we studied the shock response of two typical equiatomic high entropy alloys (HEAs) (i.e. FCC-structured CrMnFeCoNi alloy and BCC-structured NiCoFeCrAl alloy). The experimental results show that these two HEAs exhibit a relatively high Hugoniot elastic limit and high-phase transition threshold stress. We attribute this anomalous dynamic response of HEAs to their intrinsic chemically disordered structures. This work may provide new insight into shock compression behavior of HEAs.IMPACT STATEMENT This is the first work to demonstrate that high entropy alloys (HEAs) behave ‘super-stably’ under shock loading, which may provide new insight into shock compression behavior of HEAs.