Intended future application of red phosphorus compositions in bi-spectral 155mm artillery smoke shells required the development of a test procedure for the quantification of the screening effect of pyrotechnical charges up to several kilograms at different wavelengths simultaneously. This goal has been achieved by improvement of a test apparatus which consists of a burning chamber, a vertically mounted airflow tube and optical instrumentation attached at the top, and allows to determine the band-averaged mass extinction coefficient for different wavelength bands. A large variety of smoke generating items such as smoke grenades for self-protection, handheld smoke generators, artillery smoke canisters and smoke compounds disassembled from rocket warheads have been investigated by dynamic extinction measurements. A major advantage of the dynamic smoke performance test described below is the gain of average smoke performance data as well as time-resolved plots of smoke performance in the visible and the infrared region. This detailed information concerning delay, ignition phase, plateau burning and decay facilitates thorough evaluation of smoke ammunitions. The dynamic smoke performance test established at the explosives laboratory of the Bundeswehr Technical Centre of Weapons and Ammunition, Meppen, Germany, has proven to be a valuable tool for development, quality control and surveillance of smoke ammunition.
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