Modeling of plastic localization in aluminum and Al–Cu alloys under shock loading

This paper focuses on the modeling of plastic deformation localization in pure aluminum and aluminum–copper alloys during the propagation of a plane shock wave. Modeling is carried out with the use of continual dislocation plasticity model in 2-D geometry. It is shown that the formation of localization bands occurs at an angle of 45° to the direction of propagation of the shock front. Effective initiators for plastic localization in pure aluminum are the perturbations of the initial dislocation density, in the alloys – perturbations of the dislocation density and the concentration of copper atoms. Perturbations of temperature field in a range of tens of kelvins are not so effective for plastic localization. In the alloy plastic localization intensity decreases with an increase of strain rate due to the thermally activated nature of the dislocation motion.