Talk About a Big Bang! HEMI’s HyFIRE Facility Showcased in JHU Engineering Magazine

Jan 24, 2020 | No Comments | By Michelle Pagano

HEMI’s newest lab, the Hypervelocity Facility for Impact Research Experiments (HyFIRE),  is featured in the Tech Tools section of the Winter 2020 issue of JHU Engineering magazine.

What happens to a tank at the micro level when it’s hit by a projectile during combat? Or to the surface of an asteroid as it collides with a planet in space? Researchers at the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute are using equipment located in the Hypervelocity Facility for Impact Research Experiments to find answers to questions like these.

Employing a specialized hypervelocity gas gun, they launch projectiles a few millimeters in diameter at velocities up to 7 kilometers per second (Mach 20), while ultra -high-speed cameras capture the resulting events. This allows the researchers to view, in real time, how materials fail during extreme impact and to collect data that measure mechanics, strain rates, temperatures, physics, and chemistry at very high pressures. HEMI scientists hope to use this information to understand and, eventually, create materials that will better protect people, structures, and the planet.

Click here to view more articles from the issue.