Potential Advantages
Polymer-bonded explosives have several potential advantages:
- If the polymer matrix is an elastomer (rubbery material), it tends to absorb shocks, making the PBX very insensitive to accidental detonation, and thus ideal for insensitive munitions.
- Hard polymers can produce PBX that is very rigid and maintains a precise engineering shape even under severe stress.
- PBX powders can be pressed into a particular shape at room temperature, when casting normally requires hazardous melting of the explosive. High pressure pressing can achieve density for the material very close to the theoretical crystal density of the base explosive material.
- Many PBXes are safe to machine — to turn solid blocks into complex three-dimensional shapes. For example, a billet of PBX can, if necessary, be precisely shaped on a lathe. This technique is used to machine explosive lenses necessary for modern nuclear weapons.
Read more about this topic: Polymer-bonded Explosive
Famous quotes containing the words potential and/or advantages:
“The planet on which we live is poorly organized, many areas are overpopulated, others are reserved for a few, technology’s potential is only in part realized, and most people are starving.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“... is it not clear that to give to such women as desire it and can devote themselves to literary and scientific pursuits all the advantages enjoyed by men of the same class will lessen essentially the number of thoughtless, idle, vain and frivolous women and thus secure the [sic] society the services of those who now hang as dead weight?”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)