Mesoscale Mechanics of Reactive Materials for Enhanced Target Effects
Abstract
The research documented in this report concerns the mechanical behavior of sintered reactive metal compositions for potential use in shells of explosive warheads. The technical goal of the research is to determine by numerical simulations which mechanical properties cubes of sintered mixtures of aluminum and tungsten would need to survive an explosive launch and fragment into small combustible particles after penetration of a thin aluminum sheet. A methodology has been developed to determine the loads during explosive launch from macroscale, fluid-structure coupled simulations. These loads are applied as boundary conditions for mesoscale simulations of launch, impact and fragmentation using mesoscale models of the material, representative volume elements. A first set of materials is regarded, pure aluminum and pure tungsten compositions with varying intergranular strengths, porosities and grain size distributions. Whereas all aluminum based materials considered so far are to weak to survive the explosive launch, tungsten based materials perform better. For the latter materials, distributions of fragment size after impact are determined from simulations. As next step, launch and impact simulations for mixtures of Aluminum and Tungsten with varying parameters will be performed in order to quantify the properties required for suitable reactive material compositions.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 31, 2011
- Accession Number
- ADA557075
Entities
People
- A. Klomfass
- G. Heilig
- M. Sauer
- N. Durr