Nanostructured metals

Nano-materials as a research area is today one of the fastest growing areas both nationally and internationally. One of the reasons for this is that these materials often exhibit new and improved properties. In this report a few possible production methods to achieve bulk materials of nano-structure are reported. Also, through cooperation, a number of initial attempts for production of such bulk materials have taken place. This report also contains a small study of available documentation on the expected effects of the use of nano-structured materials in kinetic energy (KE) projectiles and in shaped charges. Four production methods have been tested mainly on copper materials and a reduced grain size has been detected, though not in the nano-range. High Energy Rate Forming-process (HERF) on cold conventional copper and Severe Plastic Deformation (SPD) treated copper and aluminium are both processes which start with a solid body of material. High Velocity Compaction (HVC) and Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) compaction of copper powder have both been done on a powder with an initial grain size of 78 nm. Both the powder metallurgical (PM) production methods have produced materials with a more even structure, but all methods have produced resulting grain sizes of about 1µm, which is of outmost interest.