Laser Driven Compression to Investigate Shock-Induced Melting of Metals

High pressure shock compression induces a large temperature increase due to the dissipation within the shock front. Hence, a solid sample subjected to intense shock loading can melt, partially or fully, either on compression or upon release from the shocked state. In particular, such melting is expected to be associated with specific damage and fragmentation processes following shock propagation. In this paper, we show that laser driven shock experiments can provide a procedure to investigate high pressure melting of metals at high strain rates, which is an issue of key interest for various engineering applications as well as for geophysics. After a short description of experimental and analytical tools, we briefly review some former results reported for tin, then we present more recent observations for aluminum and iron.