Coating Processes Towards Selective Laser Sintering of Energetic Materials

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) technologies are maturing and allowing effective manufacturing of components, including those of energetic material devices. On the other hand, technology advances in AM may also enable more complex fabrication of improvised explosive devices that are hard to detect. Stakeholders within the defence research and development sector need to comprehend this potential threat and strive to develop counter solutions. This work aims to contribute to the safe methodology for AM of energetic materials. Coating formulation processes were investigated and evaluated to find a suitable method that may enable selective laser sintering (SLS) as the safe method for fabrication of high explosive (HE) compositions. For safety and convenience reasons, the concept demonstration was conducted using inert explosive simulants with properties quasi-similar to the real HE. One of the coating processes for simulant RDX-based microparticles by means of a polymer is reported. These processes were evaluated for uniformity of coating the HE inert simulant particles with binder materials to facilitate the SLS as the adequate binding and fabrication method. The suspension process appears to be suitable for the SLS of polymer coated HE mocks and potential formulation methods for active HE composites. The processes investigated pave the way toward safe SLS of the active HE compositions and may open avenues for further research and development of munitions of the future. This is an extended abstract of a paper published in Defence Technology (2019), DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dt.2019.05.013.