Investigation of the effect of microstructure on shock response in TaW alloy

The effect of microstructure and processing conditions on the shock response in TaW alloy was investigated with shock recovery experiments. Gas gun-enabled soft recovery experiments were conducted on samples made with three different processing conditions, selected to vary grain structure, texture, and dislocation density. The three samples were (1) as-received - vendor supplied material, (2) cold-rolled – rolled to 50% thickness reduction and (3) annealed – cold-rolled material that was heat treated for full recrystallization. The soft recovery experiments were conducted at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Recovered samples exhibited differences in shock-induced plastic deformation mechanisms. The annealed sample, with the lowest dislocation density, had a higher density of deformation twins post-shock compared to the as-received and cold-rolled samples. This result agrees with similar trends that have been observed in pure Ta. The effect of microstructure on shock-induced deformation mechanisms is discussed. This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.