Influence of combination of coaxial cylindrical explosives on fragmentation and shock waves of a shelled composite charge

Abstract This paper investigates fragmentation and shock waves generated by a novel coaxial cylindrical composite charge composed of an inner explosive, an intermediate inert material and an outer explosive widely used in tunable ammunition. Charges containing two types of explosive combinations were designed, and explosion experiments were conducted in two initiation modes: detonating only an inner explosive and detonating inner and outer explosives simultaneously. Results suggest the composite charge with higher inner‐detonation velocity and lower outer‐detonation velocity achieves more differentiated power output under different initiations. The differences in the average fragment mass and peak overpressure are as high as 34.5 % and 39.9 %, respectively, which are larger than 4.4 % and 8.4 % under the contrary explosive combination. On the basis of this observation, corresponding 2‐D and 3‐D models were simulated using AUTODYN code to investigate the evolution of the detonation waveform and detonation energy release. The numerically simulated initial shell expansion and later shock wave propagation of the composite charge agreed well with the experimental data. The errors in expansion radius and shock wave parameters (peak overpressure and specific impulse) are less than 6.6 % and 16.9 %, respectively, between the simulations and experiments. It was found that the particle velocity profile in the charge with lower outer‐detonation velocity lagged behind that of the charge with higher inner‐detonation velocity under inner initiation, while a wave front collision zone close to the outer charge appeared in the non‐detonation layer under simultaneous initiation.