Archived: Shaped charge

[Spatula Tzar]

I tested a shaped charge today. I turned a conical hole in a 1" steel rod, filled it with the fools' explosive, placed a piece of aluminum foil on top, and wedged it against a sheet of 1/2" plywood. Here is the result:




As you can see, the confining cone directs all of the force into the plywood, causing considerable damage. The steel was completely undamaged, but the aluminum foil (thrown in as an afterthought) was nowhere to be found. Curiously, the wires on my igniter were completely stripped of insulation by the explosion, but the copper remained intact.

[nuclearrabbit]

That's not a shaped charge. It's back tamped by the steel with HE filling the void? Interesting, I'd like to see what kind of standoff it can have.

Also what explosive did you use?

[asilentbob]

Yeah not really a SC, but cool regardless.

Glad your back!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munroe_effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misznay-Schardin_effect

[nuclearrabbit]

I had an idea.

Brown being leadwires, black being tamping, green being HE and red as the point of initiation.

The setup on the right should put more punch in to the target. The way I figure this is you have more surface area being converted to gas and as the detonation front moves through the HE in a hemispherical wave it will move evenly fit inside the cone. Perhaps a conical cavity would be even better.

[Spatula Tzar]

Round two, this time with a conical void.

I used a paper cone to make the void. I drew parallel lines on the paper to show the conical angle. Approximately 1.4g of AP was used, initiated at the point of the metal tamper. (Nuclearrabit's left image)



This created the holes on the left. The blast wasn't as powerful, but this could be from the reduced amount of explosive material used. Or possibly the blast was more concentrated, and would have penetrated to a greater depth, but my test setup could not have shown this. Can anyone suggest a better setup?

Next up is another conical void, this time initiated at the point of the void. (Nuclearrabit's right image)

[InspiredByMe]

Try using a metal cone in place of the paper and basically reverse the black and green on nuke's drawing. The black being the metal cone.

[Spatula Tzar]

Round three, this time through steel.




I used an aluminum foil cone, and moved the igniter to the vertex of the aluminum. I placed the charge on sheet metal, set above the original hole. It punched through easily, wrapping the metal shards around the wood, making it very difficult to remove.



Next time I'll be blasting through a phone book. The last damaged page should give me a precise measurement of penetration, assuming it doesn't go all the way through. I'll also test a smaller version. I want to see how far down I can scale this, and still create a reliable directed charge.

[asilentbob]

Axt has done it at SMDB with the copper jacket of a bullet as the cone after melting the lead out. So you can get pretty damn small.

[Deadlock]

EPIC WIN!

[Toxyn]

Welcome home

[nuclearrabbit]

<3
You fucked that oven up.

[Spatula Tzar]

The oven had it coming. It burned my pizza rolls...

[Toxyn]

Originally Posted by Spatula Tzar

The oven had it coming. It burned my pizza rolls...

The scoundrel!!

[lordnitrox]

you never stop amazing me with new ideas, good to have you back : )

[The Savage]

Just a thought, you say you use aluminum foil for the liner, I'm guessing this would degrade performance since even when you use 5 or 6 layers it's still hella thin and fragile, so, How about using the really thick Al Foil stuff from 1kg cans of coffee? It's probably 10 - 20 times thicker than foil, sturdier and still easy to shape.

[tariel]

Nice pictures. Are you doing this with any kind of stand-off distance or is it flush against the surface when detonated?