Hazard Assessment of Explosives and Propellants

This chapter is intended to provide a background to hazard assessment of explosives, in which, conventionally, we include propellants and pyrotechnics. It will discuss: the bases of testing regimes; what we expect the data to reveal; the machine-dependence of data and the significance of it; statistical methods for the analysis of results; the role of judgment in hazard assessment; differences between hazard and reliability testing and the role of explosive confinement; the terms sensitivity, sensitiveness, and explosiveness; hazard assessment stages, i.e., powder, charge, and system tests; and insensitive munitions tests.