Abstract
Shaped charge (SC) jets are used in many aspects of warfare, particularly to penetrate steel armor, but they can also be formed inadvertently in explosively-driven experiments and this can cause a severe problem for the containment of such experiments. The very penetrative nature of these jets means that they can pose a significant risk to the integrity of the infrastructure surrounding an experiment containing explosives such as a steel containment vessel or concrete firing chamber, and this risk needs to be mitigated. In some cases, notably when experiments are conducted in vessels, the space available for the fielding of mitigation systems is limited and so the size of any jetstopper must be optimum. In addition to this, mitigation materials can be costly and generate waste and so, to ensure that this is as low as reasonably practical, the amount of material in the jet mitigation must be minimized. Also, experiments that can generate jetting threats can vary in size and our predictive capability must be able to deal with this. Overall, this requires a good understanding of the penetration of jets from SCs of various sizes into targets, which in turn requires a good understanding of jet formation, inadvertent or otherwise, and a reliable method of modelling these jets and predicting the likely penetration.
