Improving reactivity of aluminum-based structural energetic materials

Abstract

A common use for reactive metals is adding them to applications involving propellants and explosives to improve energy density and overall energy output. A newer application for the use of reactive metals is in warhead casings. Reactive metals provide the ability to boost performance in blast parameters such as peak overpressure and blast impulse. A strong contender for this application is aluminum because of its high combustion enthalpy, but current aluminum blast casings do not expend much of this stored energy. Aluminum casings also tend to create fragments that are too large to ignite and provide blast enhancement. The objective for this study is to find the most opportune methods to improve reactivity in aluminum based structural energetic materials. This will be done by testing different alloy structures and various material inserts in structured explosive experiments. This study will also utilize heavy end confinement for all tests while also taking multiple pressure measurements, high speed images, and spectroscopic images in order to decide the performance improvement from each casing.