Penetration of boron carbide, aluminum, and beryllium alloys by depleted uranium rods: Modeling and experimentation

As part of the US stockpile stewardship program, it is necessary to perform experiments with various metallic components and explosives. These experiments will be conducted within specially designed blast vessels to ensure that the debris from the experiment is contained. The debris includes fragments that are launched at hypervelocities. The blast vessels are built primarily of steel, but have windows of either aluminum or beryllium alloys for diagnostic equipment requirements. To contain the hypervelocity depleted uranium fragments, ceramic armoring of the windows and steel vessel is used. To develop the necessary design tools, a program of experiments and modeling was begun. Preliminary pre-test predictions were made to design experiments. The experiments were conducted with targets representative of the armored windows in the vessel. To assist in the vessel design, two- and three-layered target analytical models were developed to predict the penetration of depleted uranium rods striking at velocities up to 2 km/s into layered targets of ceramic (boron carbide and silicon carbide) and aluminum, beryllium and steel alloys. The agreement between the pre-test predictions, the developed layered-target analytical model, and the experiments is good.