Temporal and spatially resolved compaction in granular materials using synchrotron radiation: Initial Results

Each year approximately 99% by mass of energetic material use takes place in the quarrying, mining, construction and petrochemical industries. The coupling of explosively driven shock waves to heterogeneous geological materials is of scientific and industrial relevance.

Here we report the first experiments conducted with energetic materials at the ID19 beamline at the European Synchotron Research Facility, Grenoble, France. The experiments used commercial detonators to explosively load sand samples and glass spheres. Time resolved images showing the compaction wave produced by the explosive loading of both coarse- and fine-grained sand as well as large and small diameter glass spheres. The bulk shock properties of these materials have been reported previously at SCCM 2011 by Neal et al.

The captured images clearly show the range and variability of the compaction wave within a ‘mono-modal’ size range, under the same loading conditions. The results indicate that while previous reports by the authors, e.g. Proud et al. SCCM 2017 implied averaged compaction and shock behaviour through the use of embedded shock gauges and velocity interferometry, the use of synchrotron-radiation methods greatly increases our spatial and temporal knowledge of these ‘simple’ systems.