Terminal Ballistic Behavior of Tungsten-Rhenium Rod Projectiles

The terminal ballistic performance of tungsten-rhenium alloy rods has been compared with the behavior of standard tungsten-sinter alloy penetrators. The Re-content is x = 3, 5, 10 and 26% with the static material properties: density around 19.5 g/cm3, UTS = 1500 - 1900 N/mm2 and elongation < 1% to 18%. Rods with calibers of D = 5 - 7.5 mm and length-to-diameter ratios L/D = 10 to 16.3 have been launched with velocities between 1500 - 1800 m/s against semi-infinite, single, double and triple plate targets of steel and against a laminated steel/glass-steel target. Assessment criteria of performance are penetration, residual length and velocity as well as breaking behavior of the penetrators and residual penetration. The WRe-rods achieve some advantage of the longitudinal performance compared with WHA-rods. This behavior is partly maintained for targets with medium lateral loading of the rod during perforation. In case of high lateral loading the W26Re-rods behave similar to the WHA-pen etrators. However, the WxRe-rods with x=< 10% tend to fail with reduced efficiency. The source of failure is the extreme length deformation of the microstructure, caused by the swaging during production.