Session P2: Energetic and Reactive Materials VIII: Reactive Materials II

Modeling the Shock Ignition of a Copper Oxide Aluminum Thermite

An experimental ``striker confinement'' shock compression test was developed in the Glumac-group at the University of Illinois to study ignition and reaction in composite reactive materials. These include thermitic and intermetallic reactive powders. The test places a sample of materials such as a thermite mixture of copper oxide and aluminum powders that are initially compressed to about 80 percent full density. Two RP-80 detonators simultaneously push steel bars into reactive material and the resulting compression causes shock compaction of the material and rapid heating. At that point one observes significant reaction and propagation of fronts. But the fronts are peculiar in that they are comprised of reactive events that can be traced to the reaction/diffusion of the initially separated reactants of copper oxide and aluminum that react at their mutual interfaces that nominally make copper liquid and aluminum oxide products. We discuss our model of the shock ignition of the copper oxide aluminum thermite in the context of the striker experiment and how a Gibbs formulation model, that includes multi-components for liquid and solid phases of aluminum, copper oxide, copper and aluminum oxide can predict the events observed at the particle scale in the experiments.   

A Gibbs Formulation for Reactive Materials with Phase Change

A large class of applications have pure, condensed phase constituents that come into contact, chemically react and simultaneously undergo phase change. Phase change in a given molecular material has often been considered to be separate from chemical reaction. Continuum modelers of phase change often use a phase field model whereby an indicator function is allowed to change from one value to another in regions of phase change, governed by evolutionary (Ginzburg-Landau) equations, whereas classic chemical kinetics literally count species concentrations and derive kinetics evolution equations based on species mass transport. We argue the latter is fundamental and is the same as the former, if all species, phase or chemical are treated as distinct chemical species. We pose a self-consistent continuum, thermo-mechanical model to account for significant energetic quantities with correct molecular and continuum limits in the mixture. A single stress tensor, and a single temperature is assumed for the mixture with specified Gibbs potentials for all relevant species, and interaction energies. We discuss recent examples of complex reactive material modeling, drawn from thermitic and propellant combustion that use this new model.   

Modeling reaction fronts of separated condensed phase reactants

We present a Gibbs free energy approach to modeling reaction fronts in condensed phase reactive materials. The current interest is in chemical reactions of condensed phase reactants that are initially separated. In energetic materials such reactions are observed to occur extremely fast and at relatively sharp fronts. The solid-to-solid combustion process differs in several aspects from classical gaseous combustion due to the disparity between the characteristic thermal conductivity length and the mass diffusion lengths and a volume, temperature, stress, mass fraction equation of state that principally depends only on the component reference volumes and the current mixture composition. To retain a simple planar configuration, we consider the two reactants, in solid phase, are in motion towards each other characterized by counter-flow geometry. We apply the model to a simplified Titanium-Boron system and present the analysis of reaction zone length for various strain rates. The numerical results are validated with asymptotic approximations at the Burke-Schumann limit.   

Sub-fragmentation of structural-reactive-material casings under explosion

The sub-fragmentation of structural reactive material (SRM) thick-casings is to generate fine fragments during casing fragmentation under explosive loading for their efficient energy release to enhance air blast. This has been investigated using a cylindrical casing made from either rich Al-MoO$_{3}$ or Al-W-based granular composites. The former composite was to study the concept of reactive hot spots where the reaction of reactive particles, which were distributed into base SRM in a fuel-rich equivalence ratio, created heat and gas products during SRM fragmentation. The expansion of these distributed hot spots initiated local fractures of the casing, leading to fine fragments. The Al-W-based composite investigated the concept of impedance mismatch, where shock dynamics at the interfaces of different impedance ingredients resulted in non-uniform, high local temperatures and stresses and late in times the dissimilar inertia resulted in different accelerations, leading to material separation and fine fragments. The casings were manufactured through both hot iso-static pressing and cold gas dynamic spray deposition. Explosion experiments were conducted in a 3~m diameter, 23~m$^{3}$ cylindrical chamber for these cased charges in a casing-to-explosive mass ratio of 1.75. The results demonstrated the presence of fine fragments and more efficient fragment combustion, compared with previous results, and indicated the effectiveness of both concepts.