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Shaped charge
A shaped charge, commonly also hollow charge if shaped with a cavity, is an explosive charge shaped to focus the effect of the explosive's energy. Different types of shaped charges are used for various purposes such as cutting and forming metal, initiating nuclear weapons, penetrating armor, or perforating wells in the oil and gas industry.
A typical modern shaped charge, with a metal liner on the charge cavity, can penetrate armor steel to a depth of seven or more times the diameter of the charge (charge diameters, CD), though depths of 10 CD and above have been achieved. Contrary to a misconception, possibly resulting from the acronym HEAT (high-explosive anti-tank), the shaped charge does not depend in any way on heating or melting for its effectiveness; that is, the jet from a shaped charge does not melt its way through armor, as its effect is purely kinetic in nature; however, the process creates significant heat and often has a significant secondary incendiary effect after penetration.
The shock wave from an explosive is perpendicular to the surface of the explosive. The inside of a cone focuses and concentrates the shock wave to points along the axis of the cone. As the explosion progresses from the point of detonation, the concentrated shock wave progresses along the axis of the cone, gathering energy along the way.
The addition of a liner increases the effect of the explosion by providing a heavy mass that is ejected from the cone.
The Munroe or Neumann effect is the focusing of blast energy by a hollow or void cut on a surface of an explosive. The earliest mention of hollow charges were mentioned in 1792. Franz Xaver von Baader (1765–1841) was a German mining engineer at that time; in a mining journal, he advocated a conical space at the forward end of a blasting charge to increase the explosive's effect and thereby save powder. About 1805, the idea was adopted, for a time, in Norway and in the mines of the Harz mountains of Germany, although the only available explosive at the time was gunpowder, which is not a high explosive and hence incapable of producing the shock wave that the shaped-charge effect requires.
The first true hollow charge effect was achieved in 1883, by Max von Foerster (1845–1905), chief of the nitrocellulose factory of Wolff & Co. in Walsrode, Germany.
By 1886, Gustav Bloem of Düsseldorf, Germany, had filed U.S. patent 342,423 for hemispherical cavity metal detonators to concentrate the effect of the explosion in an axial direction. The Munroe effect is named after Charles E. Munroe, who discovered it in 1888. As a civilian chemist working at the U.S. Naval Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island, he noticed that when a block of explosive guncotton with the manufacturer's name stamped into it was detonated next to a metal plate, the lettering was cut into the plate. Conversely, if letters were raised in relief above the surface of the explosive, then the letters on the plate would also be raised above its surface. In 1894, Munroe constructed his first crude shaped charge:
Among the experiments made ... was one upon a safe twenty-nine inches cube, with walls four inches and three quarters thick, made up of plates of iron and steel ... When a hollow charge of dynamite nine pounds and a half in weight and untamped was detonated on it, a hole three inches in diameter was blown clear through the wall ... The hollow cartridge was made by tying the sticks of dynamite around a tin can, the open mouth of the latter being placed downward.
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Shaped charge
A shaped charge, commonly also hollow charge if shaped with a cavity, is an explosive charge shaped to focus the effect of the explosive's energy. Different types of shaped charges are used for various purposes such as cutting and forming metal, initiating nuclear weapons, penetrating armor, or perforating wells in the oil and gas industry.
A typical modern shaped charge, with a metal liner on the charge cavity, can penetrate armor steel to a depth of seven or more times the diameter of the charge (charge diameters, CD), though depths of 10 CD and above have been achieved. Contrary to a misconception, possibly resulting from the acronym HEAT (high-explosive anti-tank), the shaped charge does not depend in any way on heating or melting for its effectiveness; that is, the jet from a shaped charge does not melt its way through armor, as its effect is purely kinetic in nature; however, the process creates significant heat and often has a significant secondary incendiary effect after penetration.
The shock wave from an explosive is perpendicular to the surface of the explosive. The inside of a cone focuses and concentrates the shock wave to points along the axis of the cone. As the explosion progresses from the point of detonation, the concentrated shock wave progresses along the axis of the cone, gathering energy along the way.
The addition of a liner increases the effect of the explosion by providing a heavy mass that is ejected from the cone.
The Munroe or Neumann effect is the focusing of blast energy by a hollow or void cut on a surface of an explosive. The earliest mention of hollow charges were mentioned in 1792. Franz Xaver von Baader (1765–1841) was a German mining engineer at that time; in a mining journal, he advocated a conical space at the forward end of a blasting charge to increase the explosive's effect and thereby save powder. About 1805, the idea was adopted, for a time, in Norway and in the mines of the Harz mountains of Germany, although the only available explosive at the time was gunpowder, which is not a high explosive and hence incapable of producing the shock wave that the shaped-charge effect requires.
The first true hollow charge effect was achieved in 1883, by Max von Foerster (1845–1905), chief of the nitrocellulose factory of Wolff & Co. in Walsrode, Germany.
By 1886, Gustav Bloem of Düsseldorf, Germany, had filed U.S. patent 342,423 for hemispherical cavity metal detonators to concentrate the effect of the explosion in an axial direction. The Munroe effect is named after Charles E. Munroe, who discovered it in 1888. As a civilian chemist working at the U.S. Naval Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island, he noticed that when a block of explosive guncotton with the manufacturer's name stamped into it was detonated next to a metal plate, the lettering was cut into the plate. Conversely, if letters were raised in relief above the surface of the explosive, then the letters on the plate would also be raised above its surface. In 1894, Munroe constructed his first crude shaped charge:
Among the experiments made ... was one upon a safe twenty-nine inches cube, with walls four inches and three quarters thick, made up of plates of iron and steel ... When a hollow charge of dynamite nine pounds and a half in weight and untamped was detonated on it, a hole three inches in diameter was blown clear through the wall ... The hollow cartridge was made by tying the sticks of dynamite around a tin can, the open mouth of the latter being placed downward.