Quantum-accurate multiscale modeling in highly compressed metals  

Lasers are aligning diagnostics and hardware.
Lasers are used to align diagnostics and hardware prior to shooting on Sandia’s Z machine, the world’s most powerful and efficient laboratory radiation source.

The development of equations-of-state and transport models in areas such as shock compression and fusion energy science is critical to DOE programs. Notable shortcomings in these activities are phase transitions in highly compressed metals. Fully characterizing high energy density phenomena using pulsed power facilities is possible only with complementary numerical modeling for design, diagnostics, and data interpretation.  

This team constructed a multiscale simulation framework based on a combination of high-fidelity electronic structure data, ML, and molecular dynamics enabling quantum-accurate, computationally efficient predictions. This provides kinetics of magneto-structural phase transitions along shock Hugoniots and ramp compression paths in the equations of state, and transport properties such as viscosity, electrical and thermal conductivities. Findings from this project were published in the Journal of Material Science and npj Computational Materials


Sandia researchers linked to work 

  • Mitchell Wood  
  • Julien Tranchida 
  • Michael Desjarlais 

Sponsored by 

Image of LDRD_Icon-01

Associated Publications

Showing 10 of 200 publications.


June 22, 2023