Research Summaries

Back Microstructure and Fragmentation of Reactive Materials

Fiscal Year 2013
Division Graduate School of Engineering & Applied Science
Department Physics
Investigator(s) Hooper, Joseph P.
Sponsor Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DoD)
Summary This proposal seeks to relate microstructural and mechanical properties of counter - WMD reactive materials (RM) to their fragmentation and combustion. The latter are key for understanding the lethality of enhanced-blast thermobaric warheads that rely on novel RM cases. Two general classes of reactives are considered here; freeze-cast composites and low-ductility granular metallic reactives. Representative materials from both classes of RM will be subjected to dynamic impact experiments in the NPS light gas-gun and split-pressure Hopkinson bar. A collection of electron microscopy and microanalysis methods will be used to analyze the microstructures of these materials before and after high strain-rate impact and fragmentation. Microstructural observations of the induced damage will be used to inform analytic models of the fragmentation and subsequent combustion of RM debris from a warhead detonation or impact event.
Keywords
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