Explosive Bulge Test for Metal Tube of Magnetic Flux Compression Generator (MFCG)

Metal tube is the important part of MFCG. Its expansive characteristic driven by detonation product is the important basis of the MFCG design. In this paper, the detonation velocity of RDX explosive powder in copper tube was measured by electric method. We derived the detonation velocity of RDX powder (the density was 1.09 g/cm3) was 6.42 km/s. By means of measuring the distance between two electric pins in the metal tube and the time interval of detonation wave traveling, the expansive process of copper tube was measured by optical method with high-speed camera. The average values of expansive angle of the metal tube in three shots were 26.4, 28.5 and 27.3, respectively. Expansive velocity along radius direction was 1.51~1.63 km/s. We have not found any fracture of the tube within the range of the metal tube expanding to two times of the original radius. The results show that the characteristic of the metal tube satisfies the MFCG designs.