Study on the Initiation Capacities of Conical Ring Booster Pellets

The insensitive main charge explosive is becoming an important part of modern weapon development. Insensitive main charge explosives generally have a high critical initiation pressure. The detonation pressure of a traditional cylindrical booster pellet is constant at a specific density and consequently has insufficient energy output to reliably initiate an insensitive main charge explosive. To ensure that this requirement could be achieved, the conical ring booster pellet was designed and optimized. Eight-point-synchronous explosive circuits were designed as appropriate to the sizes of the four booster pellets. The initiation processes of the four conical booster pellets equipped with the eight-point circuit were simulated using ANSYS/LY-DYNA software. The experimental measurements were performed in order to test the initiation capacities of these conical booster pellets. The results demonstrated that their initiation capacities are much better than the initiation capacity of a cylindrical booster pellet. The optimum size of the conical ring booster pellet is when the ratio of the inner to the upper diameter is 0.52, the ratio of the inner to the lower diameter is 0.44, and the ratio of the height to the lower diameter is 0.50.