Munition from cradle-to-grave: Current developments in novel techniques

The requirements that military operations place on munitions are becoming more challenging every year. New munitions must meet the IM requirements, be inexpensive, have a comparable or even better performance (e.g. extended range munitions, shaped charge impact), give a decreased barrel erosion and a temperature independent performance. They also should have a multi purpose mode, a scalable functionality for Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) intervention and must function reliably to decrease the number of UneXploded Ordnance (UXO) and have a long lifetime. And finally, the environmental impact should be minimal. Such a list of requirements has become an enormous challenge when using only conventional techniques. Novel techniques are necessary to meet the current requirements. One of the main tasks of TNO is to search for new and innovative techniques to overcome these kind of hurdles in the way of processing, testing and analytical techniques. In understanding the functioning of munitions and IM-mechanisms that lead to a certain response in munitions, TNO has developed several techniques that can be used for the development, testing and analysis of new, improved munitions. For the production of insensitive munitions, crystallization techniques have been developed to produce socalled Reduced Sensitivity (RS) crystals (RDX, HMX, CL20, etc.) that form the basis for insensitive energetic compounds. TNO is capable of producing crystals on nano- and submicron-scale, up to even millimeter scale, with the proper crystal morphology (reduced number of defects like twinning or cracks, etc.) and hardly any inclusions. With respect to production techniques, a methodology has been developed to make the twin-screw extrusion apparatus suitable for safe and continuous production of energetic compounds with high solids loading. Also techniques have been developed to produce temperature-independent propellants; enabling the projectiles to perform in a constant manner in extreme weather conditions and increasing the precision. For lifetime assessment of gun propellants, a methodology has been developed based on heat flow calorimetry (HFC). Monitoring the performance changes of propellant is one of the other advantages of this technique. Computer simulations are used to support the integrity of these techniques and to assist and enable their implementation in a system. Ageing and characterization of the used materials and compositions can be done on small and medium scale and – if desired – combined with analysis of the decomposition products. In this paper an overview will be given of a several novel techniques that have been developed in order to fulfill the needs required for a cradle-to-grave approach for munition.