Novel Flame Inhibiting Materials to Increase Red Phosphorus Obscurant Safety

Red phosphorus (RP) is one of most important obscurant materials with long history. RP obscurants offer high yield factor and they are considered as the primary broad band obscurant material with high mass extinction coefficient in the visible band and also has weak attenuation performance in IR bands. However, large flames and high flame temperatures generated by burning RP create incendiary effects that may ignite dry vegetation, buildings or other materials in densely populated areas. In this project, a composite coating is developed to protect RP for safety and stability during handling. Additives in the composite coating will reduce the flame temperature and flame size through synergistic function, mitigating the incendiary effects in the obscurant combustion. A cost effective fabrication procedure is developed to produce the composite RP in the large scale.