1. Introduction
Shaped charge is a charge structure that uses the groove at one end of the explosive to concentrate energy [
1,
2,
3,
4]. Since the application of shaped charge, its structure has evolved and its performance has improved continuously. It has become an important anti-armor weapon [
1]. The traditional single-cone, double-cone, horn-shaped liners, and hemispherical and spherical missing body liners are common structures, and a shaper is used to adjust the detonation waveform [
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10]. Small cone-shaped charge liners form a jet, large cone angle and hemispherical shapes form rod jets, and spherical missing body shaped charge liners form explosive-formed projectiles (EFP) [
5,
6,
7,
8]. The velocity and structure of jet are restricted by the material properties, charge structure, and liner shape [
9]. The velocity of the traditional spherical missing body charge liner after forming is generally less than 3000 m/s, and the penetration depth is less than one times that of the charge diameter, which is difficult to break through [
5,
8]. Improving the velocity and penetration depth of the spherical missing body after forming is the focus of the current research.
In this paper, a composite structure charge containing coaxial internal and external charge columns is proposed. This charge structure uses the explosion pressure generated by the external charge column to limit the explosion pressure generated by the internal charge column, forming the coupling constraint principle of explosion pressure. In combination with the SCS gasket composed of a spherical missing body and a truncated cone, the two parts are made of copper. The spherical missing body material is expressed as “copper” and the truncated cone material is expressed as “copper-z” in the paper. The purpose is as follows: The spherical missing body forms the front of the jet and forms a large opening for the target plate. The truncated cone forms the rear of the jet, follows the front of the jet into the hole, and continues to penetrate the target plate or release fragments behind the target. Two groups of pulse X-ray tests, six groups of numerical simulation tests, and two groups of static explosion tests were carried out separately. The explosive pressure-coupling constraint principle is demonstrated for the first time. The forming mechanism and penetration performance of the charge structure are studied through pulse X-ray tests, numerical simulation, and static explosion tests.
2. Explosion Pressure-Coupling Constraint Principle and Action Process
We used an embedded constraint cylinder to separate the inner and outer explosive columns, as shown in
Figure 1. The schematic diagram of the explosion pressure-coupling constraint principle is shown in
Figure 2. The outer explosive column is divided into three zones: zone one is the impact initiation area, zone two is the constraint area, and zone three is the ejection area (mainly playing the role of ejecting the truncated cone, which is not analyzed here). After the initiation of the inner explosive column, the detonation wave propagates continuously forwards and outwards. When the detonation wave propagates to the inner surface of the outer explosive column in zone one, it is detonated rapidly, and then a stable detonation wave is generated in the outer grain. The pressure after the outer explosive column explodes (external explosive pressure,
Pw) will restrict the pressure of the internal explosion here (internal explosive pressure,
Pn), and the internal explosive pressure will also affect the external explosive pressure. This interaction leads to the coupling effect of the external and internal explosive pressures, increasing the peak value and work time of the internal explosive pressure [
4]. This principle is called the explosive pressure-coupling constraint principle. The charging schematic diagram based on the explosive pressure-coupling constraint principle is shown in
Figure 1.
Assuming the explosives detonate instantaneously, the initial detonation pressure is expressed by the average pressure for convenience of derivation, as shown in Equation (1) [
10]:
where
ρ0 is the initial density of explosive. With the progress of explosion, the radius
r of the explosive gas increases continuously, resulting in continuous decrease in density
ρ.
Since the mass of the product gas at the beginning is π
r02lρ0, the mass of the same gas at any other moment is π
r2lρ. Here,
l and
ρ are the charge length of explosive and the immediate density of detonation products, respectively.
D is the detonation velocity of the explosive,
r0 is the initial radius of explosive, and
ρ0 is the initial density of explosive. The relationship between the instantaneous detonation pressure and the immediate pressure of the expanded detonation product is shown in Equation (2) [
10]:
Equation (3) can be obtained from Equation (2) [
10]:
The instantaneous average detonation pressure of an 8701 explosive is
pc = 14.95 GPa [
11]. When the internal detonation pressure expands to the surface of the outer explosive column (expanded to
r3,
=
r3), the average immediate pressure of the internal detonation product decreases to
p1n = 9.55 GPa, which is greater than the initiation threshold of the 8701 explosive at 80 MPa [
12]. The criterion equation of explosive impact initiation [
13] is
where
Ec is the shock wave energy acting on the unit area of explosive,
pcj is the shock wave pressure,
ua is the particle velocity on the array,
ρa is the density of the explosive to be fired, and
Da is the velocity of the shock wave transmitted into the explosive to be fired. Therefore, according to the above equation, the outer explosive column detonates rapidly after Δ
τ time (the time from ignition to stable detonation is very short).
In conclusion, it can be seen that
where
p0w is the instantaneous detonation pressure of the outer explosive column. The expansion of the detonation gas produced by the inner explosive column will be limited after the initiation of the outer explosive column. The detonation wave of the inner explosive column is reflected and superimposed on the axis to form a shock wave higher than the detonation pressure of Chapman–Jougue (CJ). As the detonation wave propagates along the axial direction, the detonation wave of the outer explosive column enters zone two, and the detonation wave of the outer explosive column is always slower than that of the inner explosive column by Δ
τ time. In zone two, the constraint cylinder can transmit a shock wave, but the propagation speed of the shock wave in solids is less than the detonation speed of the outer explosive column. The shock wave passing through the constraint cylinder lags behind the detonation wave of the outer explosive column, which cannot make the outer explosive column impact ignition.
The air pressure is much lower than the explosion pressure of the inner explosive column, and the inward expansion of the explosive gas produced by the outer explosive column is much less than the expansion in the air. Therefore, without considering the inward expansion of the external explosion pressure, the internal and external pressures are equal after the outer explosive column expands for a certain time, which is a critical state, i.e.,
where
,
p1w are the explosion gas pressure of the inner and outer explosive columns at the equilibrium moment, respectively. According to Equation (2), the relationship between the external explosion pressure and the initial explosion pressure is
where
ρ1w is the density of the outer explosive column at the equilibrium moment. According to Equation (7), when the detonation product of the outer explosive column expands to
= 50.97 mm, it reaches the state of Equation (6). The expansion limit of the cylindrical charge shell is 1.8 times the initial radius [
10]. When the outer surface radius of the outer explosive column expands to 1.8 times the initial radius, the shell fails, and the sparse wave enters the detonation product of the outer explosive column, making its pressure decrease rapidly. At this moment, the outer surface of the inner explosive column also expands by 1.8 times. However, due to the constraint effect of internal and external detonation products, the constraint cylinder will not fail immediately, which can delay the propagation of the sparse wave to the detonation product of the inner explosive column, that is, delay the attenuation of the internal detonation pressure and increase the work time.
3. Numerical Simulation Study on Forming Law of SCS Liner
The two-dimensional axisymmetric model is established by using the nonlinear dynamics software Autodyn-2D. Firstly, the Euler method is used to establish the grid region, and the boundary condition of the grid region is set as outflow to simulate the forming of the SCS liner. Then, the formed jet properties are mapped to the Lagrangian grid to further solve the penetration of the jet [
14]. The shell, confinement cylinder, and target column of the shaped charge are made of 45# steel (AISI/SAE standard no. 1045), the copper plate number used in the text is T2 (ASTM standard no. C11000), and the structure of the shaped charge is shown in
Figure 1. The detonation gas of the inner explosive column is described by the JWL equation, and the detonation gas of the outer explosive column is described by the Lee Tarver equation. Lee Tarver equation is
where
λ is the mass fraction of the reacted explosive,
ηs is the relative density of the impacted unreacted explosive,
P is the local pressure (Mbar), and t is the time (μs),
I,
a,
b,
x, and
G1,
c,
d,
y,
G2,
e,
g,
z are constants.
The equation of state for impact is as follows
where
S is a constant,
uc is the shock wave velocity,
C0c is the sound velocity, and
up is the particle velocity. See
Table 1 for material parameters.
3.1. Significance of Explosion Pressure Constraint Principle
By using the numerical simulation method, the significance of the explosion pressure-coupling constraint principle is analyzed. The structure of the SCS liner is shown in
Figure 3, and the truncated cone is of equal wall thickness.
Figure 4 is the numerical simulation model of the composite charge and integrated charge, with the structures of the liners the same as that in
Figure 3. In
Figure 4, Gauss points 1–8 are velocity-monitoring points, Gauss point 9 monitors the internal explosion pressure, and Gauss point 10 monitors the external explosion pressure.
In
Figure 5, there are three peaks in each curve. The first peak is the CJ detonation pressure, and the second and third peaks are reflection peaks. As can be seen in
Figure 5a, the external explosion pressure peak (
Pw1) is smaller than the internal explosion pressure peak (
Pn1), and the external reflection peak (
Pw2) occurs before the internal reflection peak (
Pn2), because the reflection distance of the external explosion pressure is smaller than that of the internal explosion pressure. In
Figure 5a, due to the restriction of the external explosion pressure, the
Pn2 value reaches 50.90 GPa, which is significantly higher than the reflection peak (
P93, 31.91 GPa) in
Figure 5b;
Pn2 is about twice that of
Pn1, which is similar to the reflection of the rigid surface. The action time value higher than 7.5 GPa in
Figure 5a is twice that of
Figure 5b. At the internal explosion pressure
Pn3, the external explosion pressure also increases slightly, which shows the counteraction of the internal explosion pressure to the external explosion pressure. It can be seen from this that the external explosion pressure can restrict the internal explosion pressure, and this constraint is coupled. This is consistent with the theoretical analysis. The increase in pressure and the extension of action time will increase the throwing speed of micro elements of the liner and affect the forming of the liner.
The shape after jet formation is shown in in
Figure 6. In
Figure 6a, the front part of the jet is mainly formed by a spherical missing body, and the truncated cone forms the middle part of the jet and the pestle. In
Figure 6b, the head of the jet is formed by a spherical missing body, which is relatively short and thick, and the head diameter changes. Compared with
Figure 6b, the composite charge significantly changes the shape of the jet and increases the length of the jet. At 40 μs, the length of the continuous section in
Figure 6a is 63.16% higher than that in
Figure 6b. According to the penetration theory of ideal incompressible hydrodynamics, under the same material, the penetration depth of the jet is directly proportional to the jet length. Therefore, the jet in
Figure 6a is better than
Figure 6b.
3.2. Effect of the Shell on the Jet Molding
The SCS liner structure involved in this summary is shown in
Figure 3. The influence of the charge shell on the jet structure is studied. “Shaped charge without shell” means that there is no shell “6” in
Figure 1, and the constraint cylinder “3” in
Figure 1 is polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). Because the strength of PTFE is far less than 45# steel, it can only play the role of positioning the internal and external charge columns. The jet formed by the shaped charge without shell is shown in
Figure 7. The jet is obviously divided into two parts: the front and the rear. With the increase in time, the jet is elongated.
Figure 8 shows the shape of the jet formed by the shaped charge with shell, and the two parts of the jet are more closely connected. Compared with
Figure 7, “copper” still mainly forms the front of the jet, and “copper-z” forms the rear of the jet. It can be seen that the shell does not change the formation mode of the jet, but it can improve the continuity of the jet.
3.3. Effect of Wall Thickness of Confined Cylinder on Jet Formation
By changing the wall thickness of the constraint cylinder, the influence of the wall thickness of the constraint cylinder on the jet velocity is studied. With the increase in wall thickness of the constraint cylinder, the velocity of the continuous tip of the jet first increases and then decreases, as shown in
Figure 9. The fitting results show that the continuous tip velocity of the jet approaches the maximum when the wall thickness of the constraint cylinder is 2.4 mm.
Figure 10 shows the morphology of the jet when the constraint cylinder has different thicknesses. The wall thickness of the constraint cylinder corresponding to the jet is 0.9 mm to 2.9 mm from top to bottom. With the increase in the wall thickness of the constraint cylinder, the diameter of the jet protrusion decreases, and the part of the material in the spherical missing body forming the pestle body decreases.
3.4. Influence of the Top Wall Thickness of the Liner on Jet Formation
The wall thickness of the liner directly affects the shape of the jet. On the premise of not changing the shape of the grain and the bus radius of the inner and outer surfaces of the spherical missing body, the influence of the top wall thickness of the spherical missing body on the jet shape is studied. The structure of the liner is shown in
Figure 11a, and the wall thickness of the spherical missing body is measured by the top wall thickness (
d).
Figure 11b is the shape of the jet at 40 μs moment, which is
d = 1~3 mm from left to right. With the increase in
d value, the jet changes from divergence to continuity. When
d = 1~2 mm, the jet head of the explosive charge fails to form. In
Figure 11b, when
d is from 2.5 mm to 3 mm, the length of the continuous section of the jet decreases. Therefore, it is meaningless to continue to increase the value of
d. It can be seen that when
d = 2.5 mm, the jet length and velocity of explosive charge are the best, and the pestle body is moderate.
3.5. Influence of Radius of Inner Circle Generatrix of Spherical Defect on Jet Formation
According to the research results in
Section 3.1,
Section 3.2,
Section 3.3 and
Section 3.4, the wall thickness of the constraint cylinder is 2.4 mm, and the top wall thickness is 2.5 mm. Keep the radius
rw of the outer circular bus of the spherical missing body unchanged. Compare and study the influence of the radius
rn of the inner circular bus of the spherical missing body on the forming of the SCS liner. See
Figure 12 for the relevant structures and parameters of the SCS liner. The radius of the inner circular bus of the spherical missing body is 35.05~49.35 mm, and the liner is shown in
Figure 12.
Figure 13 shows the jet formed by SCS liners with different inner surface bus radiuses. With the increase in the inner surface bus radius, the jet length increases and the front diverges. When the inner surface bus radius is 35.05 mm and 38.7 mm, the jet is a continuous structure. When the inner circle bus radius is 38.7 mm, the jet length and continuity are the best. When the inner surface bus radius is 49.65 mm, the convex position is broken, and it is meaningless to continue to increase the inner surface bus radius.
3.6. Influence of Truncated Cone Shape on Jet Formation
As a part of the SCS liner, the truncated cone affects the forming of the SCS liner. According to the research conclusions in
Section 3.1,
Section 3.2,
Section 3.3 and
Section 3.4, the forming laws of different truncated cones are studied with a wall thickness of the constraint cylinder of 2.4 mm, a top wall thickness of the spherical missing body of
d = 2.5 mm, an outer circular bus radius of 45.7 mm, and an inner circular bus radius of 38.7 mm, and the structure of the explosive column and shell remains unchanged. According to literature reports [
4,
5,
15,
16,
17], cone-shaped charge liners generally include variable wall thickness (VWT) and equal wall thickness (EWT). Variable wall thickness can be divided into upper thin and lower thick (UTLT) and top thick and bottom thin (TTBT).
Figure 14a is a SCS liner with different truncated cones,
Figure 14b is the jet shape of the explosive charge. The UTLT jet in
Figure 14b changes evenly, and there is a large bulge in the middle of the EWT and TTBT jets. Compared with the UTLT jet, the lengths of the EWT and TTBT jets are reduced by 11.43% and 10.71% respectively.
According to the theory of ideal incompressible jet and target penetration [
18], the penetration depth is
where
ρJ is the density of the jet,
ρT is the density of the target, and
l is the effective length of the jet. It can be seen that the penetration depth is directly proportional to the jet length.
Figure 15 is a head velocity histogram of the explosive charge jet formed by different truncated cones. In the figure, the head velocities of UTLT are the highest, and the head velocities of EWT and TTBT are basically the same. Therefore, the explosive charge jet—after the SCS liner with a UTLT truncated cone is formed—has a uniform structure and high speed.
To sum up, the optimal scheme is: a composite charge with a constraint cylinder, a wall thickness of the constraint cylinder of 2.4 mm, a top thickness of the spherical segment charge liner of 2.5 mm, an outer circular bus radius of 45.7 mm, an inner circular bus radius of 38.7 mm, and a UTLT truncated cone.
3.7. Numerical Simulation of Jet Penetration
When the wall thickness of the constraint cylinder is 2.4 mm, the top thickness of the spherical missing body is 2.5 mm, the radius of the outer circle bus is 45.7 mm, and the radius of the inner circle bus is 38.7 mm, the numerical simulation study of jet penetration is carried out by using a UTLT truncated cone. The shaped jet is mapped into a Lagrangian mesh, and a 200 mm thick target plate model is established, as shown in
Figure 10. We set fixed constraints around the target plate. The equation of state and parameters of copper, copper-z, and 45# steel are shown in [
19], the strength model of copper and copper-z is Steinberg-Guinan, and the model parameters are shown in
Table 2 [
2]. The von Mises strength model is adopted for 45# steel, and the parameters are shown in
Table 3. The process of the jet penetrating the target plate is simulated by the geometric failure model.
The von Mises strength model holds that when the equivalent stress at a point reaches a fixed value independent of the stress state, the material will yield, or the material is in the plastic state, and the equivalent stress is expressed with the principal stress as
where
σ1,
σ2,
σ3 are the principal stress in three mutually perpendicular directions at a certain point.
The Steinberg–Guinan strength model expresses the shear modulus and yield strength as functions of pressure, effective plastic strain, and internal energy (temperature), as follows
where
ε is the effective plastic strain,
η =
v0/
v is the compressibility,
β is the hardening constant,
n is the hardening index,
=
dG/
dp,
=
dY/
dp,
=
dY/
dp,
Y0 indicates that the condition which must be met is
where
Ymax is the maximum yield strength.
The numerical simulation model of penetration is shown in
Figure 16. The opening morphology of the target plate is shown in
Figure 17. In
Figure 17, the penetration depth is 185.00 mm, the diameter of the entry hole is 18.03 mm, and the maximum hole diameter is 24.94 mm. The perforation of the composite charge designed in this paper is straight and uniform, and the middle of the hole expands, which is conducive to the feeding of the follow-up materials, and can be referenced for the design of the series warhead [
21].