Natural convection effects on TNT solidification inside a shaped charge mold

High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) warheads and ammunitions are frequently produced by explosive casting inside an axis-symmetric mold with an inverted conical geometry in the basis. In order to prevent manufacturing defects, the solidification process must be controlled. In this study, a dimensionless solidification model has been proposed to investigate the heat transfer considering the natural convection inside the liquid explosive and the numerical simulations were performed by using COMSOL Multiphysics and Modeling Software, employing trinitrotoluene (TNT) thermophysical properties. The effect of three different boundary conditions on the top of the mold have been evaluated: convection, adiabatic and isothermal. It has been observed that solidification process was faster for convection case and slower for isothermal case, while an intermediary total solidification time value was found for adiabatic case. Moreover, liquid explosive was completely surrounded by solid explosive during the solidification process for convection case and also for adiabatic case through the end of the process. Otherwise, it was not observed for isothermal case. The natural convection effects promoted a vortex inside the liquid explosive, accelerating the heat transfer process. It has been concluded that isothermal mold top boundary condition should be preferred to prevent manufacturing defects, avoiding high thermal stress.(c) 2021 China Ordnance Society. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co. Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

In this study, a dimensionless solidification model was proposed to investigate the heat transfer during the solidification process of High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) warheads. Numerical simulations were performed to compare the effects of different boundary conditions on the solidification speed and the surrounding of liquid explosive. It was found that convection boundary condition accelerated the solidification process and ensured complete surrounding of liquid explosive by solid explosive. On the other hand, isothermal boundary condition reduced the occurrence of manufacturing defects and high thermal stress.