X-ray Microtomography Analysis of Dynamic Damage in Tantalum
Abstract
With the plate-impact technique, ductile spallation experiments are carried out on Ta at impact velocities 570, 1039 and 1078 m/s. Samples are soft-recovered and analyzed by X-Ray microtomography at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. The porosity along the shock direction, and the distribution of the pore volumes are extracted from tri-dimensional reconstructions of the damaged samples. Quantitative assessment of pore coalescence is made via an inverse power-law model for the distribution. The decay exponent we associate to coalescence is of order 1.6 in the sample impacted at 1039 m/s.