A 7.62 mm energetic bullet filled with PTFE-Mg-based reactive materials for anti-drone application

To counter thin and lightweight targets such as drone swarms, a specialized design of 7.62 mm energetic bullets has been developed. These bullets utilize reactive materials as the core encased in a copper jacket, offering the advantages of impact-induced energy release, multiple damage, and lightweight. The study involved the preparation of three energetic bullets using the reactive materials (different ratio of PTFE-Mg-Bi2O3 and PTFE-Mg-Bi2O3-W) and systematically evaluating their destructive effect. The results showed that three energetic bullets (EB-A, EB-B, and EB-W) successfully penetrated two-layer stacked 2 mm 50# cold-rolled steel targets, and the respective reaction durations observed during the penetration process were 4.1, 3.5, and 9.2 ms. After armor-piercing, energetic bullets released an amount of chemical energy and produced fragmentation, deflagration reactions, and overpressure destructive effects. To further investigate the damage mechanism of the three reactive material-filled bullets, a detailed analysis of PTFE-Mg-based reactive material, such as reaction energy, burning rate, combustion temperature field, reaction overpressure, was conducted. Our work provides a comprehensive understanding of energy release performance of the reactive materials and damage behavior of the energetic bullets.