Behaviour of materials under shock loading conditions

Shock wave research is a multidisciplinary field. In materials science, it is used to study equation-of-state, phase transitions and mechanical properties. In material processing, synthesis, powder compaction, shock sintering, shock welding etc. have been the prominent applications. We have been doing shock wave research at Trombay during the last two decades. Recently, we have built a single-stage gas gun to generate shock pressures in samples. In this paper, we describe this facility and some work done on the interpretation of shock-induced phase transitions.