A study on the mechanical properties and impact-induced initiation characteristics of brittle PTFE/Al/W reactive materials

Polytetrafluoroethylene/aluminum/tungsten (PTFE/Al/W) reactive materials of three different component mass ratios (73.5/26.5/0, 68.8/24.2/7 and 63.6/22.4/14) were studied in this research. Different from the PTFE/Al/W composites published elsewhere, the materials in our research were fabricated under a much lower sintering temperature and for a much shorter duration to achieve a brittle property, which aims to provide more sufficient energy release upon impact. Quasi-static compression tests, dynamic compression tests at room and elevated temperatures, and drop weight tests were conducted to evaluate the mechanical and impact-induced initiation characteristics of the materials. The materials before and after compression tests were observed by a scanning electron microscope to relate the mesoscale structural characteristics to their macro properties. All the three types of materials fail at very low strains during both quasi-static and dynamic compression. The stress-strain curves for quasi-static tests show obvious deviations while that for the dynamic tests consist of only linear-elastic and failure stages typically. The materials were also found to exhibit thermal softening at elevated temperatures and were strain-rate sensitive during dynamic tests, which were compared using dynamic increase factors (DIFs). Drop-weight test results show that the impact-initiation sensitivity increases with the increase ofWcontent due to the brittle mechanical property. The high-speed video sequences and recovered sample residues of the drop-weight tests show that the reaction is initiated at two opposite positions near the edges of the samples, where the shear force concentrates the most intensively, indicating a shear-induced initiation mechanism.