High Penetration Performance of Powder Metallurgy Copper-Tungsten Shaped Charge Liners

Copper tungsten liner manufactured using uniaxial pressing technique has been characterized numerically and experimentally in comparison with a baseline shaped charge copper liner produced by deep drawing technique. The jet properties resulted from these two shaped charges were different according to their liner types and relevant densities which affect the resultant penetration depths into rolled homogeneous armour (RHA) targets. Different copper-tungsten powder liners have been studied and analysed using Autodyn hydrocode, from which an optimum powder design was chosen based on its maximum jet kinetic energy that can be coherent. The compacted liner elastic properties have been measured using SONELASTIC apparatus, whereas its real density is determined using helium gas pycnometer. Baseline copper liner obtained by deep drawing technique of uniform density exhibited lower penetration depth in comparison with the copper-tungsten liner (higher density powder). Besides, the penetration crater resulted from the powder liner showed clean hole without clogging because there was no massive slug as in the case of the copper liners. Experimental field tests of the two liners against (RHA) targets exhibited different penetrations depths, which have been accounted in this research.