Hazards of explosives dusts: Particle size effects.

摘要

At the request of the Department of Energy, the Bureau of Mines has investigated the hazards of military explosives dispersed as dust clouds in a 20-L test chamber. In this report, the effect of particle size for HMX, HNS, RDX, TATB, and TNT explosives dusts is studied in detail. The explosibility data for these dusts are also compared to those for pure fuel dusts. The data show that all of the sizes of the explosives dusts that were studied were capable of sustaining explosions as dust clouds dispersed in air. The finest sizes (<10 (mu)m) of explosives dusts were less reactive than the intermediate sizes (20 to 60 (mu)m); this is opposite to the particle size effect observed previously for the pure fuel dusts. At the largest sizes studied, the explosives dusts become somewhat less reactive as dispersed dust clouds. The six sizes of the HMX dust were also studied as dust clouds dispersed in nitrogen.