Explosion Heat and Metal Acceleration Ability of High Explosives

Abstract

Investigations of explosion heats of TNT and HMX show that in tests of unconfined charges the explosion products undergo intense secondary heating when approaching the wall of calorimetric bomb cavity. This secondary heating causes “re‐freezing” the explosion products in conditions of low pressure. An inert metal casing whose mass is more than four times greater than that of explosive charge prevents the secondary heating of products to the “re‐freezing” temperature and rules out a change in their composition. Filling of calorimetric bomb cavity before explosion with an inert gas produces an effect similar to that of charge casing. The value of explosion heat, measured under conditions that preclude “re‐freezing” of explosion products can serve as a measure of the energy content of high explosive. With the use of this parameter a simple method for predicting explosive performance in Cylinder Test has been developed. The method is based on the assumption that the coefficient of conversion of the chemical energy to the kinetic energy depends on the volumetric mole number of gaseous products.