LAUSR

Abstract The shock responses of crystalline Ni with two types of symmetric tilt grain boundaries (STGBs) are studied by large-scale molecular dynamics simulations, with special concerns on the effect of hydrogen segregated STGBs on them. The crystalline Ni with different kinds of H-free STGBs have significantly different plastic responses during the shock processes due to different mechanisms of dislocation emission from the STGBs. The segregation of hydrogen atoms at the STGBs significantly affects the dislocation emission from the H-segregated STGBs, and then heavily affects the shock plastic responses of crystalline Ni with H-segregated STGBs. On the one hand, dislocation emission from the H-segregated STGBs is delayed compared with that from the H-free ones at the low shock velocity, showing the so-called lagging effect. On the other hand, multi-mode dislocation emissions (or dislocation emission on the multi slip systems) are frequently activated from the H-segregated STGBs at the high shock velocity. In addition, the spallation behavior of the crystalline Ni under shock loading is also significantly affected by hydrogen segregation at the STGBs. In the targets with the H-free STGBs, spallation originates mainly from the interior of the grains due to strong interaction and reaction between dislocations there, however, it originates definitely from the H-segregated STGBs due to the reduced GB cohesive strength by hydrogen segregation.