Reactive Tungsten Alloy For Inert Warheads

Tungsten based alloys (WHA) are commonly used for kinetic energy munitions. However WHA's, both the tungsten and binder components, are generally quite inert and as such their effectiveness is limited to basic lethality of kinetic energy attributes. The purpose of this Phase-II effort is to develop a reactive binder for tungsten particles which effectively augment the lethality by incorporating reactive effects while still preserving the main kinetic energy attributes. The proposed material solution is based on the formulations of amorphous phase Liquidmetal® alloys, which provides 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. Select formulations of Liquidmetal alloys in various composite architectures will be fabricated and tested for reactivity and other performance parameters relevant to the application domain. The resulting test results will be analyzed to achieve an optimized composite architecture specific to the application. The resulting results and composite architectures will be utilized to fabricate prototype munitions in Phase-III efforts.