[AR] Re: FW: Balls, AP or other chemicals

  • From: Peter Fairbrother <zenadsl6186@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 21 Jul 2015 14:27:33 +0100

On 21/07/15 12:02, Peter Fairbrother wrote:

On 21/07/15 02:15, Troy Prideaux wrote:
*Peter – I think the 2^nd attachment [WHATHEND.DOC] is the one.*

From: Chuck Piper [mailto:cpiper@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, 16 September 2011 10:27 AM
To: Troy Prideaux
Subject: RE: Balls, AP or other chemicals

Here are the manuscripts for the two articles I wrote for the Crash and burn edition of HPR magazine

Had a chance to read it: good stuff, mostly sensible, but there were some tests they didn't do (and the science got caught up in legal wrangling about responsibility).

A theory:

When AP is heated, it decomposes at about 230C, and then, if the temperature does not rise too much, something funny happens - it stops decomposing. Only about 30% of the AP decomposes, the rest is stable at 230C. Nobody knows why this happens.

The result is nearly-pure AP, with substantially the same volume - but hot, with smaller particle size, and 30% less density - and we know that each of hotness, smaller particle size and lower density makes AP easier to detonate or DDT.

If some large vented metal containers in close proximity containing AP were heated for 20 minutes, the outside parts of the AP might contain this hot, small particle, less dense material. The inner parts of the AP in the center of the drums might also be hot, through gas heating.

If there is a fast deflagration in one of the drums, which ruptures, sending the drum wall at high speed into the wall of a nearby drum, the easily-detonatable material at the outside of the second drum might detonate, causing the material in the center of the drum to detonate as well.

And thus the transformation from deflagration to detonation (which undoubtedly happened - several times).



Just a theory, would need experimental testing. E.g. start by heating some 200 micron AP to 230C and measuring the minimum detonation radius.

-- Peter Fairbrother

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