Program Manager: Judah M. Goldwasser, Ph.D.
 The vision of the Reactive Material Structures (RMS) program is to develop materials that can serve as high-strength structural materials, and can also be controllably stimulated to produce blast energy on demand.
Reactive materials are solid materials such as metals and/or metal oxides that are not detonable, but are capable of releasing large amounts of enthalpic energy very rapidly. These materials can provide energy that exceed those of traditional explosives, and offer the potential of significantly increasing performance without increasing size or weight. The potential of this class of materials has not been realized because of limitations related to dynamic control of strength and energy conversion mechanisms. This program seeks to develop and demonstrate the revolutionary capability of integrating reactive and structural materials into a single material system, with a mechanism to activate the system and release energy upon command.
The technical objectives of the RMS program are to develop and demonstrate the following:
- High-strength, high-density materials that incorporate high- enthalpy, reactive ingredients.
- The capability to tailor the microstructure/architecture so that the material composite can be induced to undergo rapid and massive failure to produce combustible ingredients with very large surface areas.
- The capability to convert consolidated structural material into large surface area powder, disperse, and then ignite the powder to produce a high intensity blast.
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