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Ballistic and instrumented mechanical testing of long rod kinetic energy penetrator materials

Book ·
OSTI ID:237703
 [1]
  1. Army Research Lab., Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD (United States)

Tungsten heavy alloys (WHA) or depleted uranium (DU) alloys are utilized as penetrator core materials in most modern kinetic energy (KE) antiarmor munitions. The high densities of these materials permit the long rod projectiles to bring a large quantity of KE to bear upon a small presented area of an armored target and efficiently perforate armor. However, these materials must also meet a number of mechanical and material property requirements. Certain properties are important for the efficient and reliable launch of projectiles from high-pressure gun tubes. Other properties become critical once the projectile impacts a target and the penetrator must penetrate heavy armor or perforate complex spaced armor plate arrays and/or reactive armors. A number of instrumented mechanical tests and subscale ballistic tests are used to assess the utility of a new candidate penetrator material in each of these environments.

OSTI ID:
237703
Report Number(s):
CONF-9510290--; ISBN 1-878954-58-X
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English