Single-stage Powder Gun with Pressure Shear Capability and a velocity range of 0.2 to 1.8 km/s: The single-stage powder gun has a slotted barrel with a bore diameter of 40 mm capable of accelerating 200 g projectiles to 2.0 km/s. The gun uses a photonic Doppler velocimeter to measure normal and transverse velocities.

Two-stage light gas gun with a velocity range of 1.0 to 7.0 km/s: The two-stage powder gun has a barrel with a bore diameter of 12.7 mm. It can accelerate projectiles to 5.0 km/s, allowing us to probe high-pressure equations of state and shock structure in materials. This gun is also utilizing high speed PDV velocity measurements. In a spherical particle impact configuration, velocities up to 7 km/s can be reached.

Laser flyer plate and particle impact facility: The laser flyer plate impact experimental setup is developed using a 3.5 J, 7 ns laser. The maximum velocity of the aluminum flyer with a 50 µm diameter and a 500 µm diameter is 3.0 km/s. These experiments can produce short pulses that cannot be achieved with gas or powder guns. In the particle-impact setup, velocities up to 1.2 km/s can be reached.

Conventional tension and compression Hopkinson bars (strain rates vary from 104 to 105 /s): The lab has dynamic compression and tension split Hopkinson pressure bars. By changing the bar materials, experiments can be performed on soft materials or ceramics. The dynamic compression Hopkinson bar also has a 3-bar configuration for 3-point dynamic fracture measurements. 

Small-scale Hopkinson bar for shockless high-rate experiments (strain rates vary from 104 to 105 /s): The lab has built a small-scale Hopkinson bar with a diameter of 1000 µm, enabling us to attain strain rates close to 105 /s. These experiments include laser-based particle-velocity measurements and in situ microscale deformation measurements.

Automated split Hopkinson bar strain rates vary from 103 to 104 /s: We developed a fully automated split Hopkinson bar to conduct a large number of experiments for data-driven material models. The experimental setup can reload the sample, reposition the bars, rearm the gas gun with the projectile, and automate data acquisition and analysis. It can perform 60 experiments at strain rates ranging from 103 to 104 /s in an hour.

Instrumentation and data acquisition: Instrumentation includes a 6-channel Photonic Doppler velocimeter with 12 GHz and 34 GHz photodetectors. This PDV has 5 Normal velocity measurement channels and 1 Shear velocity measurement channel. Data acquisition is performed using two Oscilloscopes. The highest-speed oscilloscope has a bandwidth of 12 GHz and a 100 GS/s data acquisition rate, while the slower one has a bandwidth of 7 GHz and a 20 GS/s acquisition rate. Photodetectors for the PDV operate at 12-25 GHz, with a rise time in the nanosecond range. The lab has three more oscilloscopes (Bandwidths of 1 GHz, 400 MHz, and 200 MHz, with acquisition speeds of 10 GS/s, 1 GS/s, and 1 GS/s, respectively) for different data acquisition purposes. Density and sound velocity measurement stations are also available in the lab.

High speed imaging and digital image correlation: The lab has one Shimadzu HPVX-2 camera with an image acquisition speed of 10 million frames/s. The lab also has state-of-the-art 2D and 3D digital image correlation postprocessing software from Correlated Solutions.

Sample preparation equipment: A 10-inch-diameter lapping machine from Lapmaster-Wolters, an automatic polisher from Buehler, a vibratory polisher from Buehler, a furnace for heat treating, and a diamond saw from Allied are available for preparing samples for experiments and microstructural characterization.