Mass explosion of aerial maroons
Résumé
During a disposal of palletised packed aerial maroons, an incident occurred and the following behavioural patterns were observed: 50 mm aerial maroons exploded individually, 75 mm aerial maroons exploded en mass, mixed pallets containing both 50 mm and 75 mm maroons also exploded en mass. Therefore, mass explosion tests have been performed in order to proceed to perform an indepth analysis of the global behaviour of the maroons during disposal. A series of five 50 mm or 75 mm maroons have been assembled in a rack, simulating mono-dimensional actual assembly in a package. In the test procedure, they were initiated at one end, and measurements were done by means of optic fibres, overpressure lenses, heat flux gauges, and noise transducers. The "explosion velocity" parameter seems to be the important criterion, the mass explosion phenomenon seems to be essentially related to the pyrotechnic composition charge of each item and therefore to some critical density of pyrotechnic composition in a given packaging assembly.