Abstract: The formation behaviors of reactive shaped charge penetrator with three different shapes of liner were investigated by theoretical analysis and numerical simulation. The simulation results show that under the shaped charge effect, spherical segment and large cone liners form rod-like reactive shaped charge penetrators with debris cloud around the tail, while small cone liners form reactive jet. Compared with reactive jet, the rod-like reactive shaped charge penetrator has a lower velocity but better cohesiveness. The activation of the reactive shaped charge penetrator was analyzed based on the reaction rate equation of the reactive material. It shows that in the reactive jet, the activation zones of reactive jet are distributed in the external wall, jet head and axis of the jet. With the increase of standoff, the reaction extent of reactive materials in the activation zone increases, especially near the jet head and around the axis. This will lead to the expansion and divergence of reactive jet, resulting in the decrease of penetration depth. But for rod-like reactive shaped charge penetrators, the reactive regions mainly concentrate in the tail fragment zone and the central part of the rod tail, so the chemical reaction has relatively little influence on their penetration.