X‐ray Microtomography Analysis of Dynamic Damage in Tantalum

Abstract
With the plate‐impact technique, ductile spallation experiments are carried out on Ta at impact velocities 570, 1039 and 1078 m/s. Samples are soft‐recovered and analyzed by X‐Ray microtomography at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. The porosity along the shock direction, and the distribution of the pore volumes are extracted from tri‐dimensional reconstructions of the damaged samples. Quantitative assessment of pore coalescence is made via an inverse power‐law model for the distribution. The decay exponent we associate to coalescence is of order 1.6 in the sample impacted at 1039 m/s.