(Nuclear) Explosively Formed Penetrator Designs Thread

Essentially, yes. The (in this case nuclear) explosion is used to project a penetrator type device at high speeds and temperatures. It's slightly different than shaped charges like those used in HEAT rounds in that the shaped charge produces a 'jet' that is most effective at a specific distance, whereas EFPs are such that there is no 'ideal distance' (at least in space, where you don't have to worry about pesky things like air resistance). This means that ideally an EFP slug is molten (or even solid) and not gaseous/plasma, though odds are my design in the first post vaporizes the plate.


Further testing on whether the nukes were actually detonating has been frustrating and inconclusive, though it suggests that many of the nukes are indeed not detonating properly (or at all). Attempts to use a single missile and manually detonating it before contact has resulted in either complete misses or failures to detonate before impact. There was one case where I think I got an ideal detonation of one warhead out of a string of about 6 or so missiles, which resulted in a much larger hole that goes clean through the target ship's armor.

Entry:
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Exit:
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An attempt to look through the hole:
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EDIT: It's also of course possible that one of the warheads hit a weapon turret at the right angle, which would explain the perfectly round hole. Oops.

My mistake - thanks for the correction
And to further clarify, EFPs achieve this by having (as I understand it) less of an angle and a thicker metal cone.
Here's an image that shows various penetrator shapes for angles:


Also, does this mean that HEAT round penetrators also have no standoff limits beyond 'will the target be able to avoid it'? If so that would suggest that my efforts to produce very long-range standoff devices would be better served with shape charge type penetrators (greater speed means greater distances before evasion becomes a problem), though as far as I know it's not possible to produce shaped charges in-game currently (no way to make an angled metal cone).
Interesting.

Ah, I see.

So, the latest update is pretty exciting news for EFP enthusiasts, as standoff distances can now be set for warheads. The new missile guidance update is also extremely promising, especially for potential long-standoff EFPs - the main thing is getting the missile to aim its nose directly at the target at the desired standoff distance and then detonating.

I'm testing various standoff ranges for the original micromissile EFP design in the first post of this thread with the hope of replicating whatever distance detonation resulted in the fantastic damage as recorded 4 posts back. So far I've had my best results with an activation distancerange of 25 meters and a hard range of 5 meters, of which 6 missiles produced the results in the attached screenshots.

What exactly is the penetrator that is supposed to be propelled by your explosives ?

Wait why do all of your designs have pointed nose cones? From my research, pretty much all EFPs use flat plates on the top

my designs have a pointy nose because I want to send that pointy nose into the enemies hull as fast as 123 tones of TNT can get said pointy nose going

which is really really fast if you didn't already know...

simply put pointy nose : more armour mass in front of nuke going in the direction your target is, I have seen these nukes get through 50cm of armour on occasions. I have tested with flat nose and no nuke, both cases showed no effect on said 50cm armour

it has plenty of dV... its fired out of a coilgun at close to 7km/s

said coilgun is mounted on a drone, and the drone can have as much dV as necessary

the MIRV format is pretty useful for getting missiles where they need to go, efficient engine goes on the carry vehicle to get it where it needs to be, then you park into a good intercept orbit and start dropping nukes (or bring a coil gun and start shooting)