Enhanced Small Arms Ammunition

The current materials for small arms ammunitions have several shortcomings, such as environmental concerns, and have difficulty to meet the advancing requirements. The new material solutions and metallurgy is needed to meet the desired performance objectives and as well as safety, legal and environmental rules. The purpose of this Phase-I effort is to develop a bullet design based on a new class of materials and metallurgy for small arms ammunitions. The proposed material solution is based on the formulations of amorphous phase Liquidmetal® alloys and its composites with various metals such as tungsten. These alloys and composites provide extended range of material properties and as such extended flexibility in design. The unique amorphous structure of Liquidmetal® alloys also results in very high flow stress, tailorable density and failure modes, and robust processing and fabrication methods. Various formulations of Liquidmetal alloys and composites will be explored and a candidate formulation will be identified for the optimum bullet design and fabrication. Analysis will be performed to identify an effective precursor composite architecture. The resulting formulation and design will be utilized to develop, fabricate and demonstrate prototype rounds in Phase-II.