Energetics Basic Research Center (EBRC) Fiscal Year 2025
Funding Agency:
- Department of Defense
The EBRC is a basic research program initiated by the Combat Capabilities Development Command/Army Research Laboratory/ARO. It focuses on areas of strategic importance to U.S. national security. It seeks to increase the Army's intellectual capital in energetic materials (EM) and improve its ability to address future challenges. The EBRC brings together universities, research institutions, companies, and individual scholars and supports multidisciplinary and cross-institutional projects addressing specific topic areas determined by the Department of the Army (DA). The EBRC aims to promote research in specific areas of EMs and to promote a candid and constructive relationship between DA and the energetics research community.
The future Army is projected to be unable to achieve dominance in range and lethality due to inadequate energetic formulations and form factor limitations associated with current weapon systems. Basic research generates new knowledge that may be exploited to develop and deliver new materials and technologies that contribute to enhanced lethal effects at the system level as well as increased range and a smaller payload. These, in turn, enable space for larger, mission-critical systems, and shorter time-to-target ensuring Army battlefield dominance in Multi-Domain Operations. Army research must encompass new ways to expedite the discovery, design, and scale-up of new materials and concepts which when integrated into newly designed weapons components (e.g. additively manufactured high strength steels with pre-formed fragmentation patterns, and structural reactive materials) developed at ARL and across the Army and DoD communities, will deliver decisive weapons overmatch.
To achieve the desired future technological overmatch, advances must be made in new synthetic methodologies targeting novel energetic materials to increase performance for both explosive and propulsion applications. Physics-based synthesis (e.g., processes that use pressure, mechanical action, electromagnetic fields and/or high-energy plasmas) can potentially access materials outside those available via classical chemical synthesis, allowing exploitation of novel, non-traditional materials capable of explosive energy release (e.g., dense metastable extended solids such as doped poly-nitrogen, structural-bond-energy release materials, composite reactive materials).
Further, fundamental understanding leading to control of energy storage and release for explosive and propellant applications is required. Current knowledge gaps are extensive relying largely based on empirical rules of thumb used to identify targets. We still do not know the answers to basic questions such as “what makes a good explosive.” To address these gaps, validated multiscale models and advanced experimentation capable of capturing the relevant physics and chemistries of violent, rapid reacting events are needed to identify and understand controlling mechanisms and rates of energy release under the full range of conditions for a variety of energetic materials. This information should be able to inform the design, synthesis, and formulation of novel, stable, high-energy density materials for advanced explosive and propellant concepts. This fundamental understanding will lead to breakthrough materials and concepts.
Strong collaborations between DoD and academia are necessary to overcome challenges associated with achieving the desired goals. Some of these challenges include: developing methods and materials allowing for the manipulation of energy release rates; exploitation of structures and features across length scales, fundamental understanding of the initiation, break-up, and fragmentation during and after detonative energy release; and advanced models and experimental methodologies to capture the relevant chemistry and physics. Tackling these will require a large comprehensive cooperative effort (while also allowing for single effort exploratory efforts for high-risk concepts) with a strong emphasis on new material synthesis (that targets advanced performance) with related experimental and theoretical characterization, performance evaluation, and concept development to fully exploit the totality of available energy. Listed below are knowledge gaps and basic research opportunities which are to be addressed by the EBRC. These are discussed in further detail as the Technical Thrust Areas in Section II.A.2.
a. Novel materials and synthesis methods
b. Microstructure and geometry influence on energetic release
c. Advanced diagnostics and modeling
It is anticipated that up to ~$1M in annual aggregate funding will be available for all awards under Funding Area Two (Seedling). It is anticipated that the Seedling awards will range from $60k to $250k per year, with typical awards in the range of $120k-$180k per year.
7 April 2025 no later than 4:00 PM Eastern Time
a. Contracting Officer: Schon Zwakman schon.m.zwakman.civ@army.mil
b. Program Manager: Ralph A. Anthenien Jr. ralph.a.anthenien2.civ@army.mil, 919-549-4317
c. Technical Points of Contact (TPOC)
i. Ralph Anthenien, ralph.a.anthenien2.civ@army.mil 919-549-4317
ii. Edward Byrd edward.f.byrd2.civ@army.mil 410-306-0729