Strength of aluminum under pulsed heating conditions

Strength of material data under pulsed electrical heating are essential for the design of components used in pulsed power applications such as electromagnetic railguns. These data are not readily available in engineering handbooks. The use of long time heating data in handbooks lead to inefficient designs. Components mass and size will be much larger than required. The open literature contains a large body of data for strength of materials at temperature under rapid heating conditions such as radiation and convection. For materials of interest for pulsed power applications, such as aluminum alloys, the strength at temperatures near the melting point is about 80% of room temperature strength. This paper describes the rapid heating in pulsed power applications, summarizes the available data in the literature on rapid heating, and presents experimental results which show that strength at temperature for pulsed conditions is well above the long time heating data available in engineering handbooks.<>