Initiation Capacity of a New Booster Pellet

Insensitive munitions improve the survivability of both weapons and their associated platforms. All weapon systems contain an explosive train which needs to meet the insensitive munitions criteria but also to reliably initiate the main charge explosive. The traditional cylindrical booster pellet has insufficient energy output to reliably initiate an insensitive main charge explosive. To ensure that this requirement can be achieved, a new highly effective booster charge structure was designed. New booster pellets of four different sizes were investigated by numerical simulation and the one with the most powerful output was selected for experimental study. The results show that the new booster pellet has more initiation capacity than a cylindrical booster pellet with the same mass and pressed density. The convergence pressure of the new booster pellet is much higher than that of a cylindrical booster pellet with the same density.