Hooper, Joseph P.

Reactive materials are designed to enhance the lethality of warheads by providing thermal and overpressure damage on a target, usually via metal combustion. The Navy is currently developing a number of High-Density Reactive Materials (HDRMs) that are designed to survive explosive launch, strike a target, and then fragment heavily into a combustible metal debris cloud. Recent studies by our group at NPS and other researchers have made progress on understanding this fragmentation process, but relating the fragment cloud to lethality has proven challenging. Here we propose the development of a simplified analytic model for the multiphase reactive flow of HDRM debris inside the Navy’s standard reactive material test chamber. Our key metrics are the maximum pressure inside the target, the rate of pressure rise, and total burning time. We will develop a 1D model that makes simplified assumptions for challenging effects such as turbulent mixing, radiative heating of the cloud, and metal combustion kinetics. This model will be compared to test data from NSWC Indian Head and used for parameter studies to better understand the overpressure and thermal kill mechanisms.
NPS Naval Research Program
Office of the Chief of Naval Operations
Navy
2016