Fragmentation Behavior of Aluminum Powder Swaged Metal Compacts under High Velocity Impact

The room temperature mechanical swaging of metallic powders to form near fully consolidated, dense alloys, has allowed the synthesis of highly reactive composite metal powder compacts that retain nearly the full strength, toughness, density, and machinability of their bulk parent elements. These compositionally tailorable, swaged metal compacts can serve as structurally sound kinetic projectiles capable of contributing additional chemical energy release. However, the effectiveness of the reaction and subsequent material combustion depends upon the mechanical deformation, failure, and fragmentation of the body during impact. By means of in situ optical visualization of 2 km/s impacts on anvil targets, laser-sheet based fragment tracking, UV/VIS emission spectroscopy, and post-mortem fragment capture and recovery, this work evaluates the potential to control and influence—through input powder size and degree of mechanical swaging—the fragmentation behavior of swaged commercially pure Al projectiles, a well characterized and common material component of metal reactive systems.