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Tungsten: The Perfect Metal for Bullets and Missiles (2014)
- Animats 9y agoTungsten, the song.[1] Tungsten, wolfram, makes the steel so hard. It goes thru the side of an army tank as tho it were a paper card. If you want to rule the world, never mind wrong or right, All you got to have is tungsten wolframite. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbhP6b_2IUE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbhP6b_2IUE
- trhway 9y ago>Because, as the people of Kuwait discovered after first Gulf War, depleted uranium leaves a potentially deadly dust behind after it burns. It sounds bizarre but, in the world of warfare, tungsten is the eco-friendly alternative. i knew it is bad, just googled and according to some sources it is really bad, especially when it comes to birth defects : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-considine/us-depleted-uranium-as-ma_b_3812888.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-considine/us-depleted-ur... It is not necessary radioactivity that makes DU that bad, it is its toxicity that does it. Unfortunately, DU is still better for armor penetration : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/may/18/armstrade.kosovo https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/may/18/armstrade.koso... "Armour penetration is increased by concentrating the force of a shell into as small an area as possible, so the projectiles tend to look like giant darts. [ ... ] The other metal used for anti-tank rounds is tungsten, which is also very hard and dense. When a tungsten rod strikes armour, it deforms and mushrooms, making it progressively blunter. Uranium is "pyrophoric": at the point of impact it burns away into vapour, so the projectile stays sharp. "
- InclinedPlane 9y agoFor penetrators you want density, hardness, and other penetration aiding properties. Tungsten is very dense, but as you point out it blunts when hitting a target, reducing its effectiveness (but if you have enough it'll still work). The guardian article you linked is a little bit off on the properties of Uranium. Uranium is self sharpening (which means that when it slams into a target it fragments splinters off, leaving behind a sharp point). Uranium is also pyrophoric, which doesn't mean that it burns away pieces into vapor, rather it means that when it scrapes along as it's penetrating through metal it throws off sparks, just as flint and steel does. Additionally, Uranium is more flammable than Tunsten. This means that a long rod Uranium penetrator can punch through thicker armor than Tungsten and it spits out a rain of sparks and splinters as a burning hypervelocity rod comes through the other side of the armor. This leads to a very bad day for the target. However, because of that pyrophoricity and that burning the result of using lots of DU shells on hardened armored targets is a lot of DU dust and vapor. Because Uranium is a toxic heavy metal this can have disastrous health effects.
- the_af 9y ago> However, because of that pyrophoricity and that burning the result of using lots of DU shells on hardened armored targets is a lot of DU dust and vapor. Because Uranium is a toxic heavy metal this can have disastrous health effects. Well, I imagine being hit by a tank round has so profoundly disastrous health effects anyway, the metal toxicity doesn't matter much! (Yes, I know you probably meant adverse health effects for the people who wander into the area after the crew is killed, much like it happens with nukes, but still. The considerations are bizarre, like the article said)
- petre 9y ago> Well, I imagine being hit by a tank round has so profoundly disastrous health effects anyway, the metal toxicity doesn't matter much! It's also toxic for the people firing the rounds because blowing up a cartrigde will also evaporate some trace amount of the bullet.
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- rmm 9y agoThere are large tungsten deposits outside of China. The issue is, China has such a monopoly it controls the price. I have been apart of at least three Tungsten Mine pre-feasibility studies. All they need to do is ramp up production, and the price falls to a point where NPV of your tungsten project falls to zero.
- im3w1l 9y agoWhat about futures?
- swalsh 9y agoPrices aside, you probably also don't want to introduce a dependency on china in your weapons supply chain. This I believe was also the primary reason for the GM bailout.
- maxerickson 9y agoWhat does GM make that is important to military readiness? I can think of the Hummer, but that wasn't GM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AM_General https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AM_General .
- rz2k 9y agoPossibly the idea that a large number of subcontractors and suppliers would also have gone out of business. I think it would be difficult to determine which rationales were sufficient to get enough votes for the bailout to pass, but the cost of creating a supply from scratch after a period of zero demand from GM might have been far more expensive to the aggregate economy than the bailout was. Therefore the cost was judged 'worth it' in spite of the implicit reward to GM for decades of mismanagement.
- maxerickson 9y agoThe bailout involved completely wiping out the equity of GM. The GM that exists now is a different company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motors_Liquidation_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motors_Liquidation_Company The bailout can still have been a sweetheart deal for the creditors of the company, but it didn't do the old GM any good. I tend to think the motivation of the bailout was to reduce disruption in the job market, I don't think there would have been much more than a short term disruption in the OEM business.
- phenqavis 9y agoPhenQ est publié en février 2015 par RDK Pharmaceuticals pour ceux qui essaient de perdre du poids en tant que brûleur de graisse de qualité pharmaceutique. Il y a une différence dans l'identification des termes car il n'y a pas de «r» dans Phentemine au lieu de la phentermine commune. http://www.phenqavis.org/ http://www.phenqavis.org/
- logotype 9y agoFunny to see this article here now. For the last few weeks I've been geeking out on exotic materials, and especially Tungsten Carbide. I even went so far to buy a polished Cobalt binded TC 70mm sphere from China. It's virtually indestructible and very few materials such as diamond can scratch it.
- gnur 9y agoDo you have a link for this? I have been interested in this as well, probably isn't cheap though?
- logotype 9y agoIt's not cheap. I contacted almost all suppliers worldwide, and in EU the price is roughly 2000-3000 EUR for a single sphere. However, one supplier in China called Sintec had in stock for a mere USD 375. It's a grade 50 sphere with a precision of a few thousands of a millimetres:)
- logotype 9y agoHere's the link: http://www.zzsintec.com/Tungsten_carbide_Balls http://www.zzsintec.com/Tungsten_carbide_Balls
- rimliu 9y agoMy wedding band is made of tungsten carbide. I thought about is as a bit different (neither my wife nor I are fond of gold) but certainly not exotic.
- Steve44 9y agoThat's an unusual material for a ring, I just hope you don't get into the situation where it needs to be cut off. That would put me off using such a hard metal for rings and jewellery chains.
- logotype 9y agoYou can't cut it. But the Carbide is brittle and with enough pressure it can shatter Carbide ring manufacturers have this in mind and intentionally make "weak points" on the ring so it can be removed in an emergency.
- zimpenfish 9y agoTAOFLEDERMAUS have done a few videos on Tungsten rounds / strength. Tungsten carbide slugs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDWD4VM-31E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDWD4VM-31E Shooting a tungsten cube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5kEj5ijChc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5kEj5ijChc etc.etc.
- mcguire 9y agoTaofledermaus and AvE? I'll be off in the weeds for a while.
- Steve44 9y agoIf you're interested then have a read about the development of Chobham and Dorchester armour. There is very little detail out there but fascinating to see how some of the military kit is made and what it can stand up to.
- HankB99 9y agoInteresting. In the SciFi series (and books) The Expanse the rail gun projectiles were tungsten. I thought it was just due to the heat resistance of tungsten but it might have been chosen by the authors for the additional property of density. I wonder if the electrical properties make it suitable for the mechanisms used for rail gun propulsion.
- hwillis 9y agoIt's almost always chosen for density in scifi- most early railguns used tungsten because the density means you can have a very small cross section per unit mass, meaning low wind resistance which is important at super and hypervelocity. Of course it's irrelevant in space, but it carried over to sci-fi anyway.
- major505 9y agoI think the actual railgun that the navy is developing also use thungsten projectiles.
- dogma1138 9y agoIt's really not the perfect metal for neither bullets or missiles. Tungsten will strip out any barrel, even normal copper jacketed bullets can strip a barrel after a few 1000's of rounds. Some calibers are prone to stripping more than others which is why some high end rounds will be covered by a polymer coating that adds lubricity and protects the barrel (it also has the benefit of dampening some inconsistencies in the barrel itself which can improve precision). Tungsten given enough velocity will go through pretty much anything, this isn't something you want with bullets both because you usually do not want bullets to go beyond their targets and that a bullet needs to be able to dump it's energy into the body to be effective. Small caliber through and throughs leave much less tissue damage unless hitting a vital organ and even then a larger, slower round that deforms would transfer more energy to the target. The velocity of the bullet has a hard limit and that is the energy that is stored in the chemical propellant. As for missiles tungsten is heavy as fuck, it's denser than Uranium and Lead you want your missiles to have as long of a range as possible, be as fast as possible (to be harder to intercept) for that you need them to be as light as possible. If you can make your missiles take on more weight and you've already achieved the desired range and velocity then you better off just putting more stuff that goes boom than an inert metal that does nothing. Tungsten, just like high carbon steel and depleted uranium is useful for only one thing and that is penetrating armor, in those cases you would optimize your penetrator for that task meaning you'll be using a small narrow profile (basically a dart, or well a flechette) which moves really fast and can compromise heavy armor. The only real use for tungsten in traditional projectiles it to defeat composite reactive armor that would make shaped charges and other traditional anti armor munitions less or completely in effective. Even in those cases the tungsten penetrator is more often used to either disable the vehicle by destroying it's engine block, turret controls, suspension and tracks or by compromising the main body armor and then finishing it off with a explosive anti armor around that would also cause crew casualties (in a war of attrition killing the tank crew is often more important than destroying the tank). It's also important to note that tungsten penetrators are often not made out of pure tungsten since it blunts (relatively) easily, so carbides and other really hard materials would be used to make it even more effective. Besides that Tungsten might be useful for gravity penetrators basically "bunker busters" although in that case DU and lead might be just as potent unless you are limited by the size of the bomb itself. Lastly the only other real use of Tungsten is in DIME warheads, these warheads employ inert metal powder as the force delivery mechanism, they fill their effective area with micro-shrapnel that pretty much would tear and liquify all tissue within it's blast radius but due to the high density of the metal and the limited explosive charge have a very small blast radius for intended lethal zone reducing direct collateral damage to zero.
- hwillis 9y ago>Tungsten's only rival for this kind of application is the radioactive element uranium. Depleted uranium is (almost) as dense as tungsten and has an added advantage - from a military perspective - that it burns at the extreme temperatures generated as you punch your way through steel tank armour. It's also self-sharpening (ie rather than smooshing like plastic on contact, parts break off and leave a sharp edge behind like flint), and because it's effectively subsidized by power generation and the nuclear program it's extremely cheap compared to Tungsten. Tungsten alloys are tougher[1] (actually, some of the toughest materials period) but penetration depends heavily on the armor type. Hell, tungsten is toxic too and the military's biggest motivation is probably just as a really effective PR move. Uranium is definitely worse though, and I'm glad the US doesn't use it in munitions much. Uranium forms oxides that are very bioavailable (and even absorbed as gas through the lungs), and are really bad for you and even worse if you get pregnant. [1]: http://www.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.cam.ac.uk/files/news/research/news/110908-granta-design-chart.jpg http://www.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.cam.ac.uk/files/news/research...
- 3pt14159 9y agoJust PR? Really? Isn't drag essentially quadratic to speed? Isn't needed input energy also quadratic to speed, while momentum is linear to both mass and speed? Hardness aside don't you have much harder hitting bullets with these heavy elements?
- hwillis 9y agoThe density of tungsten is 1.04% higher than Uranium, and drag is compensated for by making the penetrator slightly longer rather than wider. > Hardness aside don't you have much harder hitting bullets with these heavy elements? Maybe I'm tired but I can't parse this question.
- mizchief2 9y agoSure except for the incredible increase in cost over lead and that it would be banned as handgun ammo due to it's armor piercing capability.