A Holistic Approach Directed Toward Controlling the Inbore Deflagration Hazard of Composition B, a Cast Explosive

Abstract

The castable explosive composition B can no longer be used in some artillery munitions of the U.S. Armed Forces because it is vulnerable to inbore thermal explosions. Such accidents are believed to result from a confluence of events and explosive properties that bring together two or more low probability events that lie within an ordered sequence. The holistic approach of this study requires that an improvement be made in each of four steps in this sequence so that a contribution would be made toward reducing the probability of an incident at each of these steps. Success in this endeavor would cause a rare event to become increasingly more rare at an exponential rate proportional to the degree of improvements made. Keywords: Composition B; TNT; Cast explosives; Hazards; Setback; Premature; Inbore explosion; Deflagration; DDT; Ignition; Thermal sensitivity; Combustion; Detonation; Sympathetic detonation; Shock sensitivity; Exudation; Pressure casting.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 1988
Accession Number
ADA196635

Entities

People

  • H. W. Voigt
  • R. W. Velicky
  • S. Nicolaides

Organizations

  • United States Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Counter IED
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accidents
  • Additives (Chemicals)
  • Ammunition
  • Burning Rate
  • Closed Bomb Tests
  • Combustion
  • Crystal Structure
  • Engineering
  • Explosions
  • Explosives
  • Heat Energy
  • Materials
  • Mechanical Properties
  • Munitions
  • Projectiles
  • Sympathetic Detonations
  • Test Fixtures

Readers

  • Economics
  • Rocket Propulsion.
  • Statistical inference.