Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2011
We identify a shock-induced melting and great facilities of the melting in accelerating subsequent alloying reactions in nanostructured Ni/Al multilayer films using a novel molecular dynamics technique, which captures the initial shock transit as well as the subsequent long time scale alloying process. We observe a pronounced increase of the pressure in the melting process (i.e., a process of coexistence of solid and liquid phases). As soon as the melting completes, the temperature increases dramatically indicating a start of explosive alloying reactions and the pressure starts to decrease. The pressure going up or down is determined by the competition between melting and alloying reactions.