The working principle and characteristics of tungsten alloy prefabricated fragments for killing warheads

The working principle and characteristics of Tungsten Alloy Prefabricated Fragments for killing warheads:

Tungsten Alloy prefabricated fragments are one of the main types of warheads that kill targets. They mainly rely on the explosion of high-energy explosives to form a large number of high-speed fragments, which use their high-speed impact, ignition, and detonation effects to damage targets. It can be used to kill live forces (humans, livestock), unarmored or lightly armored vehicles, aircraft, radar, missiles, and other weapons and equipment. According to the generation pathway of fragments, fragment killing warheads can be divided into three types: natural, pre controlled, and tungsten alloy prefabricated fragment warheads. The following picture shows the shell of a grenade, which is a typical tungsten alloy prefabricated fragment.

Natural fragments are formed by the expansion, fracture, and fragmentation of the shell under the action of detonation products. The characteristic of this type of warhead is that the shell acts as a container and forms killing elements. The size of the fragments is uneven, the shape is irregular, and the speed decays quickly when flying in the air, limiting the effective killing range of the grenade.

The pre control fragments adopt technical measures such as casing grooves, explosive grooves, or adding inner villages to weaken the local strength of the casing, control the rupture site during the explosion, and thus form fragments. The characteristic of this type of warhead is that the fragments formed are uniform in size and have basic regular shapes.

Tungsten alloy prefabricated fragments are pre processed and formed, and prefabricated fragments such as steel balls, steel arrows, Tungsten Balls, and tungsten columns with pre designed shape and quality are made into prefabricated fragment sleeves, which are installed on the outer or inner surface of the grenade body. These tungsten alloy prefabricated fragments, together with the natural fragments formed by the explosion of the grenade body, form a fragmentation killing field. Due to the consistency of the flight resistance characteristics of prefabricated fragments, grenades with prefabricated fragments will have a relatively dense killing effect within the set range, and the killing power of the entire projectile will be greatly improved.

Due to the negative effect of tungsten alloy prefabricated fragments on the structure of the projectile, they are usually only used in low bore pressure artillery ammunition, such as mortars and large caliber howitzers. The commonly used ones include aerial bombs, hand grenades, landmines, etc. At present, the tungsten alloy prefabricated fragments used in high bore pressure artillery are all in the form of shotguns, such as the Swiss L70 40mm anti-aircraft grenade containing tungsten carbide steel balls. Prefabricated fragment technology has been widely applied to various types of warheads. Cylindrical fragments (tungsten pillars), as a type of prefabricated fragments, have become one of the main killing elements for air defense, anti radiation, and surface kill due to their high density and strong armor piercing ability, and have been widely used.