ABSTRACT
Shock physics is the study of how high intensity, highly transient events affect materials. There are essentially two areas where this applies. The first area is shocks in nonreacting materials. This field of study is important because it allows one to determine whether materials will survive a dynamic event or not. It tells us information about the material that would not be predicted by static equilibrium solid mechanics. The second area is that of reacting material behavior. This area is important because it allows us to see whether a shock is sufficient to begin and foster a chemical reaction such as a detonation. Both of these areas are the subject of whole textbooks, however, we shall only devote sufficient space to introduce them to the reader. An important subset of nonreacting shocks is how stresses developed by these input
loads propagate and reflect off free surfaces potentially leading to spallation. Spallation is an important process in ballistics whereby the target of a projectile may be compromised without perforation leading to damaging behind-armor effects.
