Towards materials at extremes: from intense dynamic compression to expansion

ongoing

The project aims at developing robust, reliable and effective techniques for generation of extreme conditions. Positive TPa as well as negative MPa pressures in liquids will be produced with limited resources available in everyday research environment. The project offers a unique integration of approaches and resources in high voltage engineering and plasma physics applications towards classical problems of compressible fluid mechanics. It investigates by experiment, computation and theory the major physical properties of imploding shock waves in liquids and offers approaches to enhance efficiency of the focal energy concentration. The project develops a novel method for generation of imploding rarefaction waves, a well controlled scenario that provides with exactly opposite range of extreme conditions, namely negative pressures in liquids. The approaches comprise a single generator facility that opens research on a broad spectrum of basic-to-applied subjects, promising a long-term investment towards studies of materials at extremes. The facility is applied on a selected subject of mechanical treatment of cellulose fibers, aiming at enhancing the efficiency of fibres disintegration, homogenization and fibrillation processes by applying, both selectively and combined, compression and tension pulses on a broad range of intensities, from strong to extreme.