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 Phase I, Luna developed a modified RP material with an engineered composite structure that resulted in greatly reduced flame size and temperature, as well as improved optical extinction in infrared wavelength. Fire retardant components are integrated on the RP surface. In this proposed Phase II project, Luna will optimize the quality and optical performance of the composite RP obscurant material and develop the fabrication and process capability for large scale production. An advanced fabrication line with capability to produce the composite RP in large scale (100 lb in 24 hours) will be constructed. Comprehensive quality control of the scaled-up composite RP obscurant performance will be performed.