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 so-lidification 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 Multi-physics 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 pro-cess 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

The study investigates the solidification process of High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) warheads and ammunitions using numerical simulations and modeling software, considering the effects of different boundary conditions. Solidification is faster under convection, slower under isothermal condition, and intermediary under adiabatic conditions.