ARDEC Solid Gun Propellant Shock Initiation Sensitivity Test
Abstract
NOL large card gap test is not suitable to assess the shock sensitivity of granular propellant beds made of large grains. The result can be strongly influenced by the heterogeneity of the bed. A new small scale gun propellant shock sensitivity test has been developed at ARDEC. This test is a sensitive discriminator to assess gun propellant shock sensitivity. Shock-to-detonation sensitivity is one of the most important safety/hazard properties of energetic materials. Traditionally, this property is evaluated by the NOL large card gap test shown in the TB 700-2, the Department of Defense Explosive Hazard Classification Procedures. The large card gap test was developed to evaluate the shock sensitivity of homogeneous material such as a monolithic block of high explosive. This same test is now also used to evaluate the shock sensitivity of granular gun propellant beds which are highly heterogeneous. There have been some doubts in the safety community about the applicability of the large card gap test to assess the shock sensitivity of the granular gun propellants. As a part of ARDEC's gun propellant effort to investigate the basic material properties of gun propellants, the problem of using large card gap test to evaluate gun propellants, in particular for large caliber guns, was investigated, and an alternate new gun propellant shock sensitivity is developed. The results of this study is reported in this paper.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 1994
- Accession Number
- ADA507254
Entities
People
- Pinlei Lu
Organizations
- United States Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center