Studies of hypervelocity impact problem by means of laser-target experiments—A new approach

The paper presents experiments dealing with interaction of Nd-glass laser radiation with single and double planar Al foil targets. An ablatively accelerated thin foil may achieve high velocity which cannot be obtained in any other way (for the mass of the order of 10−7 g). It can be applied to investigate effects of collision between accelerated foil and planar metal target. The accelerated foil fragment may be regarded as a projectile. Craters arising in this way are similar to those obtained in hypervelocity impact (HVI) experiments. An additional comparison can be made with results of laser simulation method (LSM). The aim of our work was to find the scaling laws for the relative volumes of craters for the velocity range up to about 100 km/s. We should also like to compare results of both methods used by us: laser ablative acceleration method (LAAM) and laser simulation method with hypervelocity impact.