UC San Diego

Two types of heterogeneous reactive materials, Aluminum- Tungsten composites and Aluminum-Nickel laminates were investigated. The current interest in these materials is their ability to combine the high strength and energy output under critical condition of the mechanical deformation which may include their fragmentation. Mesoscale properties of reactive materials are very important for the generation of local hot spots to ignite reactions and generate critical size of debris suitable for fast oxidation kinetics. Samples with different mesostructures (e.g., coarse vs. fine W particles, bonded vs. non-bonded Al particles, W particles vs. W wires and concentric vs. corrugated Al-Ni laminates) were prepared by Cold Isostatic Pressing, Hot Isostatic Pressing and Swaging. Several dynamic tests were utilized including Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar, Drop Weight Test, Explosively Driven Fragmentation Test, and Thick-Walled Cylinder Method. A high speed camera was used to record images of the in situ behavior of materials under dynamic loading. Pre- and post-experiment analyses and characterization were done using Optical Microscopy, Scanning Electron Microscopy, X-ray Powder Diffraction, and Laser Diffraction. The numerical simulations were conducted to monitor the in situ dynamic behavior of materials and elucidate the mesoscale mechanisms of the plastic strain accommodation under high-strain, high- strain-rate conditions in investigated heterogeneous materials. Several interesting results should be specifically mentioned. They include observation that the fracture and dynamic properties of the Al-W composites are sensitive to porosity of samples, particles sizes of rigid inclusions (W particles or wires), and bonding strength between Al particles in the matrix. Soft Al particles were heavily deformed between the rigid W particles/wires during dynamic tests. Three plastic strain accommodation mechanisms are observed in Al-Ni laminates. They depend on the initial mesostructure and act to block the development of periodic patterns of multiple shear bands that have been observed previously in homogeneous solids and granular materials