Transfer of Self‐Sustained Reactions between Thermally Coupled Reactive Material Elements

Abstract

System engineering requires the implementation of assembly methods allowing the formation of functional elements according to a desired system design. This is possible by joining prefabricated elements on a desired place in the system or by forming functional materials at wanted locations. Both approaches need temperature treatment. A typical system in part consists of materials restricting the use of annealing procedures above 300 °C. For this reason, higher‐temperature operations have to be localized to the point of use and transferred to the next reactive element. A further requirement is the reduction of the thermal budget of the localized joining process implementing ultrashort heat treatment operations. Reactive metallic multilayer offers the combined possibility of implementing a localized heat source and the formation of a functional intermetallic alloy. The article demonstrates the feasibility of a heat and reaction transfer chain in a topological structured pattern consisting of localized reactive multilayer materials under conditions of their gasless combustion. For the used Ni/Al multilayer material system, the critical (obstacle thickness) dimensions for the reaction and heat transfer are determined using a high‐speed camera and pyrometer measurements.