Armed with Science | Tag Archive

Soldiers To Get Safer Artillery Rounds

Filed under Featured by jtozer on April 8, 2013 at 7:20 am {no comments}

The Army will take delivery of new artillery rounds which will be safer, but which will also deliver the same performance as those currently used, said an engineer who has tested them.

M795 projectiles, like the ones pictured here, will soon become equipped with IMX-101, making them far less likely to explode if dropped, shot at or hit by a roadside bomb during transport. (Photo by Marine Corps Sgt. Christopher R. Rye)

“Cost, performance and IM” were the deciding factors in the Army choosing IMX-101 to replace trinitrotoluene, called TNT for short, as the explosive material found in artillery shells, said Phil Samuels, a chemical engineer at Picatinny Arsenal, N.J.

“IM” or insensitive munitions, is the safety factor that was tested.

“TNT does pretty poorly in IM testing against threats such as bullets, fragments, and shaped-charge impacts and fires,” he said.

The testing is fairly rigorous, Samuels said, simulating worst case situations where enemy fire might impact the TNT or IMX-101 filled rounds.

When normal precautions are followed, the TNT doesn’t pose a significant threat. The Army has been using it for at least 90 years, Samuels said.

Army and Marine Corps artillery units will be the first to receive IMX-101 deliveries next year, in the form of 155mm M795 artillery shells.

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Lab Testing Seeks Data on Modified Gunner Protection Design

Filed under STEM, Technology by jtozer on February 8, 2013 at 9:45 am {no comments}

The best way to evaluate the effectiveness of a product is to put it in the hands of the user, obtain feedback, and make adjustments accordingly.

With a newly developed Virtual Environment Test Bed scientists and engineers at the Target Behavioral Research Laboratory at Picatinny Arsenal, N.J., can record how soldiers react and perform inside a newly modified Objective Gunner Protection Kit. (Photo by Todd Mozes)

With a newly developed Virtual Environment Test Bed, or VETB, scientists and engineers at the Target Behavioral Research Laboratory at Picatinny Arsenal can record how soldiers react and perform inside a newly modified Objective Gunner Protection Kit, or OGPK.

The OGPK is an armored turret that provides much-needed protection for tactical vehicle gunners in combat situations. Soldiers voted the OGPK as one of the Army‘s top 10 Greatest Inventions in 2007, the year it was first fielded.

“The purpose of testing the OGPK in a virtual test bed is to evaluate gunner performance in various threat scenarios,” said Thomas Kiel, chief, Turret Engineering and Force Protection in the Systems Engineering Directorate, part of the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center, known as ARDEC.

A customized version of the “America’s Army” gaming environment was integrated with the actual OGPK hardware and weapon system to provide a more realistic simulation.

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Set Phasers To Fry

Filed under STEM, Technology by jtozer on July 10, 2012 at 7:41 am {3 comments}

A guided lightning bolt travels horizontally, then hits a car when it finds the lower resistance path to ground. The lightning is guided in a laser-induced plasma channel, then it deviates from the channel when it gets close to the target and has a lower-resistance path to ground. (Photo Credit: U.S. Army photo)

Scientists and engineers at Picatinny Arsenal are busy developing a device that will shoot lightning bolts down laser beams to destroy its target.

Seriously.

Soldiers and science fiction fans, you’re welcome.

“We never got tired of the lightning bolts zapping our simulated (targets),” said George Fischer, lead scientist on the project.

The Laser-Induced Plasma Channel, or LIPC, is designed to take out targets that conduct electricity better than the air or ground that surrounds them. How did the scientists harness the seemingly random path made by lightning bolts and how does a laser help?

To understand how the technology, it helps to get a brief background on physics.

“Light travels more slowly in gases and solids than it does in a vacuum,” explained Fischer. “We typically think of the speed of light in each material as constant. There is, however, a very small additional intensity-dependent factor to its speed. In air, this factor is positive, so light slows down by a tiny fraction when the light is more intense.”

“If a laser puts out a pulse with modest energy, but the time is incredibly tiny, the power can be huge,” Fischer continued. “During the duration of the laser pulse, it can be putting out more power than a large city needs, but the pulse only lasts for two-trillionths of a second.”

Why is this important?
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Improving The Hand Grenade

Filed under Logistics by jtozer on June 28, 2012 at 7:04 am {one comment}

Soldiers engage in grenade training. The hand grenade is familiar to the general public by virtue of its frequent appearance in countless war movies. Yet the basic technology is almost 100 years old. A Picatinny arsenal engineer wants to give a modern face-lift to the warhorse of warfare. (By U.S. Army photo)

As far as the design of the basic hand grenade goes, essentially it has been frozen in time.

The first pull-pin design with a lever and delayed fuze dates back to May 1915 and is often referred to as the grandfather to the current variation.

“The basic technology is almost 100 years old,” said Richard Lauch, a Picatinny Arsenal engineer, referring to the Mills Bomb No. 5.

The Mills bomb is the popular name for a series of prominent British hand grenades. They were the first modern fragmentation grenades and named after William Mills, a hand grenade designer.

Lauch, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps, has been on a mission to modernize the hand grenade so that it is safer as well as easier to use and cheaper to produce.

During the last year and half of his Marine service, Lauch was primary marksmanship instructor in the Weapons Training Battalion at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, Calif.

While he was assisting in training recruits on the proper use of the M67 hand grenade, Lauch became intimately familiar with what he saw as the grenade’s deficiencies.
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Lethal Technology

Filed under Technology by jtozer on May 1, 2012 at 7:36 am {no comments}

Engineer Chris Haines holds a cylinder composed of reactive materials.

Imagine a warhead with fragments that flare and burn when the warhead detonates.

Now imagine the potential destruction of an artillery shell made almost entirely of that stuff.

Such a theoretical weapon is one of the goals behind the research being conducted by Picatinny Arsenal engineers working at the Advanced Materials Lab.

In conventional artillery shells, the explosive force generated upon detonation causes the warhead to break apart. The resulting fragments flung out in all directions are great speed explains how these weapons cause their damage.

But the potential destructive force is increased dramatically with capabilities of reactive materials that can be formed and strengthened to replace the inert materials that make up the rest of the warhead.

The reactive materials form the structure of the warhead rather than simply being loaded into the warhead.

“Structured reactive materials, or SRM, will enhance the lethality of current and future weapons while maintaining or reducing the payload,” said Paul Redner, a materials engineer with the Advanced Materials Lab.

“Unlike with more traditional (reactive materials), SRM will be a direct one-to-one replacement of inert components.”

The engineers have already made progress in the research, yet challenges remain.

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Making Ammunition Safer for the Warfighter with Thermal Indicating Paints

Filed under STEM, Technology by Carla Voorhees on September 8, 2011 at 12:02 pm {no comments}

Dr. Giuseppe L. Di Benedetto is a chemical engineer at the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development, and Engineering Center (ARDEC) located at Picatinny Arsenal, NJ. He is the ARDEC Technical Lead on the Thermal Indicating Paints program, as well as the Technical Lead on other materials related research and development programs within the Advanced Materials Technology Branch.

As a chemical engineer in the U.S. Army at Picatinny Arsenal, I have the opportunity to work on new and exciting materials research projects that address immediate and future needs of the warfighter. However, when I started working at Picatinny Arsenal, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from my new job in the Advanced Materials Technology Branch. I was familiar with some of the research and technologies being developed by the group from meeting and talking to some of the engineers and scientists at conferences while in graduate school. Yet, I didn’t know which topics and issues I would have the privilege to work on or how quickly I would be assigned to them. Well, honestly, it didn’t take long for my knowledge and expertise to be utilized to address the important issue of extreme temperature exposure of ammunition during transport, storage, and pre-positioning and its potentially deleterious effect on ammunition safety and reliability.

Thermal indicating paints are special formulations of paint that change color (typically from blue to red) when exposed to a set temperature range. They utilize thermochromic polymers to help trigger the color change at varying temperature ranges and act as an inexpensive, easily readable indication system to monitor environmental exposure history of an item.

It was documented during Desert Storm operations that temperatures inside munitions’ containers sometimes exceeded 190°F. Storing ammunition at temperatures beyond design limits could compromise their integrity and performance and lead to increased safety concerns when the warfighter attempts to fire them. There is currently no foolproof method to know whether or not the safety of ammunition has been compromised. This is where we come in with a potential solution to the problem: Thermal Indicating Paints! (more…)

Soldiers Benefit From Lighter Mortar Systems

Filed under STEM, Technology by Julie Weckerlein on August 2, 2011 at 10:00 am {no comments}

With a deafening blast, Rakkasan mortarmen from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division fire a 120 mm mortar system during the brigade level training, Sept. 29, 2007 at Camp Buehring, Kuwait. The rounds' targets were far behind the hills in the distance. U.S. Army Photo by Pvt. Mary Gurnee

Troops out in the field, wearing heavy battle rattle and carrying their weapons, will soon have lighter mortar systems in their arsenal.

Mortar crews have started receiving new lightweight 60mm mortar systems that are approximately 20 percent lighter than previous versions. The Program Executive Office for Ammunition fielded the Army’s first M224A1 60mm Lightweight Company Mortar Systems to 1st Special Forces Group in Fort Lewis, Wash., last month.

Eventually all former legacy M224 systems will be replaced with the new lightweight systems.

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America’s Army Platform Trains Soldiers in Explosive Ordnance Disposal

Filed under STEM, Technology by Carla Voorhees on August 1, 2011 at 9:10 am {no comments}

Dr. Bernard Reger is an engineer at the US Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) located at Picatinny Arsenal, NJ. He is the lead for Business Planning and Development at the Armament Software Engineering Center, a CMMI Maturity Model 5 rated life cycle software engineering center, responsible for development, management, and sustainment of our Soldiers’ software intensive systems.

Picatinny recently received a patent for the process to train Soldiers to operate robotic vehicles, such as the Talon and PackBot, using a virtual operator control unit within a virtual environment, based upon the “America’s Army” interactive videogame. Courtesy photo.

Tron. It was 1982 and the world watched as Kevin Flynn was sucked into his computer by a laser pointed at his back. We watched the laser scan and pull him into the computer. For the next hour or so, Flynn battled his way through a computer generated world. Like most computer ‘geeks’ of my generation, I was captivated. ‘Programs’ were beaten in disc games and de-rezzed, but they were only computer generated. I was so looking forward to buying my own person sucking laser.

Time moves on and we all grow up. First I go to Binghamton University (Binghamton, NY) and get a degree in Physics. Then it’s off to get my Masters and PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University (Evanston and Chicago, IL).

Fast forward to the present: I am an engineer at the Armament Software Engineering Center at the U.S. Army’s Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center in Picatinny Arsenal, NJ. The challenge: our Soldiers in Explosive Ordnance Disposal (that’s mil-speak for bomb squad) use state-of-the-art robots, such as Qinetiq TALON and iRobot PackBot, to disarm or destroy explosive devices placed by our enemies. Soldiers want to practice on the robot as much as possible before they are tasked on a mission with life or death consequences, but most of them are already being used and aren’t always available for training. (more…)