PhD Project - Determination of spatial temperature variations in dynamically compressed materials

Supervisor: Dr. Daniel Eakins

Email: jasmina.music11@imperial.ac.uk

The experimental characterisation of the temperature of dynamically loaded materials is of fundamental importance and presents a long standing issue in shock science. Difficulties lie in the short duration (<μs) of dynamic compression experiments and the fact that the onset of phenomena such as nucleation/growth of hot-spots, shear localisation and heterogeneous melting result in spatially varying temperature distributions. The focus of this project is on the development a new, spatially resolved reflectivity thermometry system with the aim of investigating the development of non-uniform temperature in dynamically loaded materials.

The project is taking place at The Wolfson Laboratory for Ultrafast Imaging of Extreme Physical Processes at Imperial College where the ISP is currently developing a long-pulse laser loading facility in collaboration with the Laser Physics Consortium and Plasma Physics group.