Modeling of LASER-Matter Interaction in flexible Polymer-Confined Aluminum Coupons: Towards the Use of ns-Pulsed Lasers for Generating Controlled Large-Scale Shocks in Materials.

The use of ns-pulsed LASERs as shock generators is now well-known in the community studying the behavior of materials under high strain rates. In the last years, some significant advances in LASER beam monitoring have been achieved while experimental studies focusing on plasma-confining media have provided valuable insights into different shock amplifications mechanisms induced by these media. Among these media, flexible polymer-based confinement has been recognized as a promising candidate for generating shocks reaching several GPa, optimizing their effect on material surfaces. However, to date, no published studies have explored LASER-matter interaction modeling in this polymer-confined regime. The work presented here describes a numerical correlation of shock waves experiments conducted at the HERA facility (200J, 15ns, Φ108mm, 1053nm) on pure aluminum coupons, investigating LASER-matter interaction in confined regime using polymer-based adhesive tape as the confining medium. The numerical tools employed for this work include a 1D LASER-matter interaction code to compute the applied shock loadings and a 1D hydrodynamics and mechanics code to model the shock propagation through the thickness of aluminum coupons. The adhesive tape, which is transparent to the LASER beam, is modeled using a polymer equation of state (EOS). The correlations presented in this work show reasonable agreement with experimental measurements, demonstrating the ability of the employed numerical tools to reproduce shock loadings generated with the adhesive tape as confining medium.