Study on evaluation method for driving fragment ability of explosives

The present study proposes an evaluation method for the driving fragment ability of explosives, which aims to provide theoretical and technical support for the selection of explosives used in warheads. The evaluation method is proposed in the light of the dimensional method and the similarity principle, and it uses TNT equivalent as the evaluation indicator. To acquire the evaluation indicator, a test system for driving fragment ability of explosives is constructed, which includes a dynamite gun type driven device, a spherical fragment, and a multi-zone fragment velocity measurement system. TNT and thermobaric explosive were used to carry out the verification experiments of the evaluation method. On the basis of the evaluation method, the basic evaluation model for the driving fragment ability of explosives was established by the TNT mass and the corresponding fragment maximum velocity. Using the basic evaluation model, the TNT equivalent of the thermobaric explosive in driving fragment ability was calculated to be 1.29, which was 3.2% different from the ratio (1.25) of both explosives’ Gurney-specific energy. The relative error of 3.2% falls within the allowable range of engineering error, confirming the feasibility of the proposed evaluation method. The result shows that the proposed evaluation method is effective and accurate in evaluating the driving fragment ability of explosives.