Anisotropy in shock compression of different polymorphs of SiC

High hardness and melting point makes SiC an important ceramic material having wide application in defense industry. Typically, SiC utilized for armor and or other applications in defense is a polycrystal having different polymorphs and with numerous defects and thereby the properties of these materials have significant scatter. It can be quite anticipated that the response of the polymorphs of SiC exhibit significant differences in response. In this study anisotropy in shock Hugoniot response of SiC is shown not only amongst the different polymorphs but also between different orientations of the same polymorph. It is expected that this molecular dynamic study will lay the fundamental grounds explaining the scatter is experimental observations of SiC under different loading conditions. However, it should be noted that the study is only limited to considering pristine single crystal materials with no defects.