Use of laser-accelerated foils for impact study of dynamic material behaviour

Impacts of laser-accelerated metallic foils offer a convenient means of investigating the response of solid targets to pulsed loads of controlled amplitude and duration. In this paper, we show that the combined use of laser-launched flyers and time-resolved velocity measurements may provide valuable experimental data to characterize the dynamic behaviour of materials at very high strain rates. We illustrate the interest of that technique for the determination of compressed and released states in shock-loaded transparent materials on one hand, and for the study of spallation in opaque targets on the other hand. The analysis of the data, based on a simple theoretical description of one-dimensional wave propagation, shows the overall consistency of the results, and the limits of the method are discussed.