Influence of electric current intensity on the performance of electroformed copper liner for shaped charge application

Abstract

Electrolytic Copper used in the shaped charge liner manufacturing can be produced from acid solution using electro-deposition technique. The intensity of the applied electric current controls the quality of the produced copper grade. The electric current intensity within the electrolytic acidic solution cell with the minimum oxygen and sulfur elements in the produced copper was optimized and found to be 30–40 A/Ft2. The elemental composition of the obtained electrolytic copper was determined using high-end stationary vacuum spectrometer, while the oxygen was determined precisely using ELTRA ONH-2000 apparatus. Besides, SEM was used to investigate the shape of the copper texture inside the deposited layers and to determine the average grain size. New relations have been obtained between the applied current intensity and both the oxygen and sulfur contents and the average grain size of the produced copper. Experimental result showed that when the applied current density increases to a certain limit, the oxygen and sulfur content in the electrolytic copper decreases. Performance of the produced copper liner was investigated by the static firing of a small caliber shaped charge containing an electro-formed copper liners, where the penetration depth of the optimized electrolytic liner was enhanced by 22.7% compared to that of baseline non-optimized liner.