A unique geometry is presented that creates biaxial stresses and strains when subjected to uniaxial loading in order to facilitate further multiaxial fatigue research by reducing the need for the use of specialized multiaxial loading equipment. Cyclic plasticity is a critical process in fatigue and the geometry was successfully designed and fabricated to allow for the continuous monitoring of cyclic plastic strains of magnitude 10^(-4) mm/mm during cyclic loading. Simulation results show that plasticity occurs in a region central to the test specimen while also being subjected to biaxial stresses and strains characterized by average principal direction ratios of 1.18 and 1.39 respectively. Simulation shows fatigue life of the specimen to be 79 thousand cycles, which allows for a reasonable evolution of cyclic plasticity before reaching failure. Issues with the instrumentation process hindered experimental validation of the simulation results.
Bicrystal samples were shock loaded using flyer-plates via light gas gun and direct laser ablation. Stress, pulse duration, and crystal orientation along the shock direction were varied for a fixed boundary misorientation to determine thresholds for void nucleation and coalescence as functions of these parameters. Pressures for gas gun experiments ranged from 2 to 5 GPa, while pressures for laser ablation experiments varied from 17 to 25 GPa. Samples were soft recovered to perform damage characterization using electron backscattering diffraction (EBSD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). Results showed a 14% difference in the thresholds for void nucleation and coalescence between samples with different orientations along the shock direction, which were affected by pulse duration and stress level. Fractography on boundaries with strong damage localization showed many small voids, indicating they experience rapid nucleation, causing early coalescence. Composition analysis was also performed to determine the effect of impurities on damage evolution. Results showed that higher levels of impurities led to more damage. ABAQUS/Explicit models were developed to simulate flyer-plate impact and void growth with the same crystal orientations and experimental conditions. Results are able to match the damage seen in each grain of the target experimentally. The Taylor Factor mismatch at the boundary can also be observed in the model with the higher Taylor Factor grain exhibiting more damage.