Enhanced ignition behavior of reactive material projectiles impacting fuel-filled tank

Reactive material projectiles can be an extremely efficient lethality enhancement technology that incorporates the defeat mechanisms of chemical energy and kinetic energy. This paper presents such a research on the enhanced ignition behavior of reactive material projectiles impacting a fuel-filled tank. Firstly, the ignition process description of the fuel-filled tank impacted by inert metal and reactive material projectiles is presented. Secondly, ballistic impact experiments are performed to investigate the ignition effects of the fuel-filled tank impacted by reactive material versus tungsten alloy projectiles with mass matched. The fuel tank used for the experiments is a cylindrical steel casing structure filled with aviation kerosene and sealed with aluminum cover plates on both ends using screw bolts. The experimental results indicate that, compared with impacts from tungsten alloy projectiles, there is dramatically enhanced structural damage to the fuel-filled tank and an enhanced ignition effect caused by reactive material projectile impacts. Finally, an analytical model is developed, by which the effects of the aluminum cover plate thickness on critical structural failure energy of the fuel-filled tank and the total energy of the reactive material projectile deposited into the fuel-filled tank are discussed. The analysis shows a good agreement with the experiments.