Research Summaries

Back Reactive Materials for Small-Scale Penetrators

Fiscal Year 2017
Division Graduate School of Engineering & Applied Science
Department Physics
Investigator(s) Hooper, Joseph P.
Sponsor Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DoD)
Summary Reactive materials are designed to enhance the lethality of warheads by providing thermal and overpressure damage on a target, usually via metal combustion. These materials are typically ductile in compression, but brittle in tension. Lethality and continuum scale modeling of these materials has proven challenging since the community lacks several key pieces of experimental information on their impact fragmentation and basic mechanical properties. Here we propose a study of key DTRA reactive materials that will provide relevant data to modeling collaborators and allow simulations of the survivability and lethality of small-scale penetrator warheads with a reactive material case. We will study the high-rate mechanical properties of the Matsys M3 and M7 materials to interface with continuum simulations of transient stress loading during penetrator impact. We will examine the impact fragmentation behavior of the M3 material through thin perforation targets and into thick semi-infinite planes, to develop a fragmentation model that can integrate into SHAMRC and FATEPEN simulations. In subsequent years we will expand this work to consider two additional areas. First, we will explore additively manufactured reactive materials that can be tailored for specific weapons applications. Second, we will use high-speed IR imaging of gun-launched reactive fragments as a means of validating continuum models of combustion for novel materials.
Keywords Reactive Materials Weapons
Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal