Liner mattrials for shaped charge warheads

Shaped charge warheads have been successfully used for a long time in defeating combat vehicles, main battle tanks, ships, submarines, fortifications etc. New modern add-on armours and improved base armours have to some extent decreased the threat posed by simple shaped charge warheads. To face this challenge a lot of research around the world has been devoted to develop warheads with better performance against these new armours. One way to increase the performance is to use a more powerful high-explosive. However, copper which today is the most commonly used liner material cannot be loaded much more without generating incoherent jets. To progress in this field it is necessary to use other materials with higher density and bulk sound speed without sacrifice ductility. The two most promising materials are molybdenum and tungsten. These materials are however brittle at normal conditions and requires a very fine microstructure to behave ductile. Part of the research at FOI has for this reason been directed to investigate different techniques to prepare liner materials with fine grained microstructure, preferably nano structural, and to evaluate how these materials performs as liner materials. In addition to molybdenum and tungsten, efforts have also been made to improve the microstructure of copper and to study how amorphous materials, which lack a crystal structure, perform as liner materials. The purpose of this report is to summarize the results from research on liner materials for shaped charges carried out during the period of 2001-2008 at FOI.