QUESTEK INNOVATIONS LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A16-016
QUESTEK INNOVATIONS LLC — SBIR Phase I award from Department of Defense.
- Amount
- $154,613
- Agency
- Department of Defense · Army
- Program / Phase
- SBIR · Phase I
- Topic
- A16-016
- Solicitation
- 2016.1
- NAICS
- —
- Place of performance
- IL
- Period
- 2016-08-01 → 2017-11-24
Description
Recent research by the Army has indicated that silver-based alloys will serve as a superior replacement material for tantalum liners in EFPs.EFPs must have high ductility while experiencing very high strain rates (104-107 s-1) in order to form coherent jets.Strengthening Ag/Ag-based alloys will allow for complete replacement of tantalum for EFPs, providing for superior performance.Under this SBIR program, QuesTek Innovations LLC, a leader in Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME), will design a novel high-strength, nanostructured silver alloy by precipitation strengthening and grain refinement to enable improved performance in explosively formed projectiles. QuesTek will its proven ICME toolset to predict novel strengthening precipitate phases that can form in Ag-based alloys.Appropriately screened candidates will be prototyped and optimized to provide strength to the Ag-based alloy through the production of finely dispersed nanoprecipitates.Grain refinement will be controlled by small elemental additions known to produce small, equiaxed grains after cold working.Through these efforts, QuesTek will use its Materials by Design technology to develop next generation, high-strength, Ag-based alloys for shaped charge/EFP applications.