Daniel Eakins BS, MS, PhD

Dr Daniel Eakins is an experimental scientist working at the interface of "extreme" materials science, shock physics and dynamic measurement science. He conducts research on the ultrafast behaviour of materials under extreme loading conditions, using a combination of gas-guns and high-power lasers to study key physical processes from their lattice-level origins to the bulk scale. 

Daniel's work encompasses the dynamic strength and failure of both metals and ceramics, with emphasis on heterogeneous systems. He is an expert in the shock response of porous/cellular materials, having focused on dynamic energy absorption in additive manufactured lattices, and tuning of shock-induced reactions in granular mixtures.

Since arriving in the UK, Daniel has helped pioneer the use of advanced X-ray imaging methods to provide new details on the behaviour of materials under shock compression. He received his PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2007, after which he was awarded a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In 2010 he joined Imperial College London as a lecturer to help establish the Institute of Shock Physics, serving as its Deputy Director.

From 2017 he held an Associate Professorship and Magnesium Fellowship within the Solid Mechanics and Materials Engineering Group at the University of Oxford. He was made full Professor in August 2024.

• Shock compression of solids
• Dynamic strength, incipient plasticity, and failure
• Ultrafast X-ray probing of extreme states
• Hexagonal materials
• Shock-induced chemistry
• Additive manufacturing
• Granular materials

• High-rate/shock response of Mg/alloys
• Establishment of dynamic loading platforms at the ESRF
• Dynamic behaviour of additively manufactured metals and alloys
• Investigation of the elastic precursor decay phenomenon
• Thermomechanical study of adiabatic shear localization in Ti alloys
• Development of reflectance thermometry for spatially resolved measurements at low temperatures
• Dynamic compaction of porous and granular materials

See more, via ORCID.

• J.G. Derrick, M.E. Rutherford, D.J. Chapman, T.M. Davison, J.P.P. Duarte, L. Farbaniec, A. Rack, D.E. Eakins, and G.S. Collins. “Investigating shock processes in bimodal powder compaction through modelling and experiment at the mesoscale,” International Journal of Solids and Structures, 2019 (in press).
• M.E. Rutherford, D.J. Chapman, D.E. Eakins, J.G. Derrick, and G.S. Collins. “Insights into local shockwave behavior in granular materials from pre-shot X-ray tomography,” Journal of Applied Physics, 125, p 015902, 2019.
• J.C. Wood, D.J. Chapman, K. Poder, N.C. Lopes, M.E. Rutherford, T.G. White, F. Albert, K.T. Behm, N. Booth, J.S.J. Bryant, P.S. Foster, S. Glenzer, E. Hill, K. Krushelnick, Z. Najmudin, B.B. Pollock, S. Rose, W. Shumaker, R.H.H. Scott, M. Sherlock, A.G.R. Thomas, Z. Zhao, D.E. Eakins, and S.P.D. Mangles. “Ultrafast imaging of laser driven shock waves using Betatron X-rays from a laser wakefield accelerator,” Scientific Reports, 8, p 11010, 2018.
• E.M. Escauriza, M.P. Oblinado, M.E. Rutherford, D.J. Chapman, J.C.Z. Jonsson, and D.E. Eakins. “Ultra-high-speed indirect x-ray imaging system with versatile spatiotemporal sampling capabilities,” Applied Optics 57(18), p 5004, 2018.
• T.G. White, A. Tikku, M.F.A. Silva, G. Gregori, A. Higginbotham, and D.E. Eakins. “Identifying deformation mechanisms in molecular dynamics simulations of laser shocked matter,” Journal of Computational Physics 350, p 16, 2017.
• B. Gurrutxaga-Lerma, M.A. Shehadeh, D.S. Balint, D. Dini, L. Chen, and D.E. Eakins. “The effect of temperature on the elastic precursor decay in shock loaded FCC aluminium and BCC iron,” International Journal of Plasticity 96, p 135, 2017.
• M.E. Rutherford, D.J. Chapman, J.G. Derrick, J.R.W. Patten, P.A. Bland, A. Rack, G.S. Collins, and D.E. Eakins. “Probing the early stages of shock-induced chondritic meteorite formation at the mesoscale,” Scientific Reports 7, p 45206, 2017.
• G. Whiteman, G.D. Owen, J. De’Ath, D.J. Chapman, D.E. Eakins, J.G. Turner, and J.C.F. Millett. “Spatially resolved measurements of grain size effects on the shock and spall response of quasi-Taylor wave loaded pure copper,” Journal of Applied Physics 122, p 035106, 2017.
• T.A. Ota, D.J. Chapman and D.E. Eakins. “Monte-Carlo modelling to determine optimum filter choices for sub-microsecond optical pyrometry,” Review of Scientific Instruments 88, p 044902, 2017.
• T.G. White, J.R.W. Patten, K. Wan, A.D. Pullen, D.J. Chapman, and D.E. Eakins. “A single camera three-dimensional digital image correlation system for the study of adiabatic shear bands,” Strain e12226, p 1, 2017.
• R.E. Winter, S.M. Stirk, E.J. Harris, D.J. Chapman, and D.E. Eakins. “A technique for studying the response of materials to high rate, high strain deformation,” International Journal of Impact Engineering 97, p 116, 2016.
• R. Torchio, F. Occelli, O. Mathon, A. Sollier, E. Lescoute, L. Videau, T. Vinci, A. Benuzzi-Mounaix, J. Headspith, W. Helsby, S.N. Bland, D.E. Eakins, D.J. Chapman, S. Pascarelli, and P. Loubeyre. “Probing local and electronic structure in Warm Dense Matter: single pulse synchrotron x-ray absorption spectroscopy on shocked Fe,” Scientific Reports 6, p 26402, 2016.
• T.D. Swinburne, M.G. Glavicic, K.M. Rahman, N.G. Jones, J. Coakley, D.E. Eakins, T.G. White, V. Tong, D. Milathianaki, G.J. Williams, D. Rugg, A.P. Sutton, and D. Dye. “Picosecond dynamics of a shock-driven displacive phase transformation in Zr,” Physical Review B 93, p 144119, 2016.