Talk:Shaped charge

I reckon this article should be combin ed with the HEAT article (or vice versa). As far as I know tehre is no difference between a shaped charge and a HEAT warhead and there is not substantive difference int eh articles - there is a lot of duplication. I reckon the articles should be combined and then one should reditrect to teh other. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.49.150.39 (talk) 15:40, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Forgive me if this is acceptable on wikipedia - but the section on this page discussing Voitenko compressors is 50% plagiarised from the source (a NASA webpage). The same material is repeated on the Voitenko compressor page as well. Should this be rephrased? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.76.27.133 (talk) 08:20, 29 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This seems to make sense and I would support this. What do others think? I am no expert in this matter, BTW.--TDurden1937 (talk) 20:46, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am no expert, but I tend to agree - I also propose merging Explosive lens since ther is no practical difference - It rather looks as if this area needs the attention of an expert, and maybe reformatting? Timpo (talk) 09:05, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am somewhat of an expert. There is an immense practical difference, and I oppose the merge. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 17:16, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The article uses CD referring to Core Diameter. This is not explicitly defined. Exactly what measurement represents the CD, and where is it measured. At the place where the greatest CD is, or what? This needs to be known because penetration power is expressed as a multiple of CD.--TDurden1937 (talk) 20:52, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The citations given in this section are both speculative in nature. Neither actually discuss actual existing devices, merely hypothetical devices. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.179.5.25 (talk) 02:17, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

re "the shaped charge does not depend in any way on heating or melting for its effectiveness":

• not for the shaping
• burning DU is a contribution to military effectiveness
  • http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/du.htm

Does this belong in the article? ArthurDent006.5 (talk) 08:17, 4 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It has nothing to do with penetration, but does contribute to destruction past tge armor package somewhat.

That said, superheated glowing hot liquid metal sprays at rifle bullet velocities are pretty bad, burning or not... Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 09:16, 4 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The German and French articles on shaped charges contain information that differs in some details from that contained in the English article. The articles also contain some information that's not presently contained in this article.

Problem: The French article contains no references and the German article contains only a few.

Translation of the French article on history of shaped charges

The hollow charge was the invention of Dr. Mohaupt, a Swiss citizen. In 1935 he presented his invention to the French army, but the staff laughed at him, denying the invention's utility and the danger of tanks. Nevertheless, Thomson-Brandt, recognizing the value of the invention, put it into production in the form of rifle grenades for the MAS 36 rifle, too late however for it to be distributed at the front in 1940. The invention reached the U.S. via diplomatic pouch, the U.S. paying the Brandt firm royalties on all hollow charges produced during World War II.

[Subsequent research: According to this source — David Lehmann (December 5, 2005) "1939-1940 French Armament", pp. 93–94 (available on-line at: Hit Pages ) — Mohaupt's shaped charge munition was developed by the French weapons firm of Edgar William Brandt. Brandt used Mohaupt's ideas to develop both an artillery shell and a rifle-launched grenade.

• The 75mm HEAT shell was tested at the artillery test range in Bourges, France in 1940. On 14th June 1940, the French war ministry authorized Brandt to give all this information to the USA and to the United Kingdom, including the exploitation licence for the Mohaupt patent. The inventor, Henry Mohaupt, via the Brandt company, filed for US patent on 10th February 1941. (Here is Mohaupt's patent: Henry Hans Mohaupt, "Projectile," U.S. Patent no. 2,419,414 (filed: October 3, 1941 ; issued: April 22, 1947)) On 7th March 1941 the patent was classified as "secret".
• At the end of 1939 Brandt developed also a 50mm HEAT rifle grenade. It had a range of about 100m and an armor penetration of 40mm (1.57 inches). It entered in production during May 1940 and was successfully tested at the Versailles–Satory test range on 10th June 1940, but they could not be issued to the combat units before the armistice. The documents related to this work were sent to the USA in June 1940 and were in some extent used as basis to develop the M9 AT rifle grenade and the HEAT rocket of bazookas. The Brandt HEAT rifle grenade was also secretly produced in France at 300,000 pieces in the free zone and issued to Vichy forces. Several partisans groups used them in 1944.

VexorAbVikipædia (talk) 21:32, 16 April 2016 (UTC)][reply]

The first bazooka stemmed from a harpoon cannon that was intended for hunting whales; the Americans simply used it to launch a hollow charge. Charges with magnetic base plates were used at the start of World War II during the taking of fort Ében-Émael. At this time, only this type of munition was capable of handling modern armor. However, the charge's large size did not permit its integration into a shell or a rocket; they were brought to the site by gliders and placed manually on their targets.

However, this handicap was solved soon enough, and the hollow charge was to be found in the German Panzerfaust, the American bazooka, and the British PIAT. Later hollow charges are to be found in numerous anti-tank shells or in anti-tank rockets, under the name HEAT, in conjunction with AP (armor piercing) shells.

The Germans, having captured some of the first American bazookas, hastened to copy them in the form of the Panzerschreck, then towards the end of the war, in the form of disposable over-caliber launchers constituting the Panzerfaust family. It was also used in the Mistel, a modified Ju88 bomber, with the cockpit replaced with an enormous hollow charge and piloted by a fighter (first the Bf 109, then the Fw 190) attached to the bomber, which detached shortly before impact. This assembly was used with variable success against allied naval installations such as Gibraltar, Leningrad, and Scapa Flow, as well as bridges crossing the Vistula, a Polish river.

It was during World War II that the British invented a hollow charge in the form of a grenade. However, if the technology had seemed to show promise, the use of such grenades was soon abandoned.

At the start of the 1960s, hollow charges could penetrate 4 times their caliber in steel tank armor; in the 1970s, 8 times; and in the 1980s, 10 times using the most powerful explosive, octolite [a mixture of HMX and TNT (see: Cameo Chemicals)]. They lost their attraction in the course of this period due to the constant development of reactive armors, which consist of explosive tiles fitted on the tank's armor. The tiles explode invidually in response to the impact of an explosive charge, efficiently dispersing the perforating jet of the hollow charge. In contrast to penetrating shells, the effectiveness of the hollow charge is based on the power of the explosive. Its effectiveness is therefore independent of the speed of the projectile that carries it, which renders it more useful in missiles, rockets, and aerial anti-tank submunitions.

In order to counter reactive armor, certain munitions are now equipped with tandem hollow charges, such as the HOT missile. A small hollow charge is placed in front; it triggers the explosion of the tile, permitting the second, normal sized charge to penetrate the more conventional armor.

Translation of the German article on history of shaped charges

Discovery

Since the end of the 18th century, it was known that the geometric form of an explosive charge plays a decisive roll in the explosive's effect; for example, a hollowed out charge possesses an especially high penetrating power. In the year 1792 Franz von Baader was the first to write about this effect. An investigation of this phenomenon wasn't possible at the time. In the 1930s the Reichswehr secretly contracted out a series of developmental projects in this field. Thus at the Second Physics Institute of Berlin University under Prof. Erich Schumann, a series of dissertations on theoretical problems of the hollow charge were written. Also, in the USA, work had been done on the hollow charge principle since 1880, which during the 1930s was advanced by Heinrich Mohaupt and which led to hollow-charge hand- and rifle grenades as well as later to the development of the bazooka. This weapon was first used in November 1942 in North Africa during Operation Torch.

On the part of the German armaments industry, there were developed in 1938 tank-busting projectiles with hollow charges (abbreviated HL or Hl), such as the Gr. 38HL, which could be fired with a 7.5 cm KwK 37 tank cannon.

Conventional hollow charges

In Germany, Franz Thomanek of the Air Transport Research Institute in Braunschweig achieved a breakthrough in 1935. He developed the first hollow charge weapon, a 7 cm. anti-tank weapon. In 1938, Thomanek also discovered the liner effect, which would prove decisive to further research. The weapon's penetrating power was thereby more than doubled. Starting in the summer of 1942, the development of the Panzerfaust was completed by a development team under the leadership of Heinrich Langweiler at the Leipzig firm of Hugo Schneider Inc. Shortly after his second discovery, Thomanek joined Hubert Schardin at the Institute for Technical Physics and Ballistics at the Technical Academy of the Air Force in Berlin-Gatow.

[Note that in the German account, Thomanek discovered the hollow charge effect in 1938, whereas Kennedy states that it was discovered earlier, and the German account states that Thomanek discovered the liner effect before joining Schardin, whereas Kennedy states that Thomanek made that discovery while working for Schardin.]

Shortly thereafter Thomanek gave hollow-charge research a new direction: he suggested to Max Steenbeck, a scientist at Siemens, an investigation, via X-rays, of the gas discharge during hollow charge detonations. Subsequently the Ballistics Institute and Siemens' research laboratory developed an X-ray flash tube, with which more than 45,000 images per second could be recorded. Thereby the jet's formation during a hollow-charge detonation and its effect on armor plate could be observed and analyzed for the first time. Subsequently comprehensive improvements were made at the Army Weapons Office (HWA) and at the Air Force Academy by Schardin; these improvements found their application in the development of weapons, of which the Panzerfaust became the best known of all.

One of the first uses of the hollow charge was on 10 May 1940 during the storming of the Belgian fort Eben-Emael by German parachutists, during which charges of up to 50 kg were used for the destruction of the armored cupolas.

After Erich Schumann took over leadership of Army research in the Army Weapons Office, Walter Trinks was appointed in 1940 as director of the Wa Fl b department, explosion physics and hollow charges. By the war's end, Trinks' scientific team had filed at least forty secret patents regarding hollow charges.

Atomic hollow charges

Starting in 1942, the theoretical work of the fluid dynamicists Adolf Busemann and Gottfried Guderley gave impetus to a completely new direction for work in nuclear physics. Both worked at the Air Transport Research Institute in Braunschweig and concerned themselves with the focusing of shock waves. They showed how pressure and temperature jumps could be achieved in a small region at the center of convergence of energetic shock waves. Their investigations gave impetus to experiments to initiate fusion reactions by means of high pressures and temperatures.

At the urging of Carl Ramsauers, director of the research department of AEG, there began, in autumn, experiments with deuterium filled hemispheres at the HWA (Walter Trinks, Kurt Diebner) and the Naval Weapons Office (MWA, Otto Haxel). In October 1943 Trinks began at the Army Research Institute Kummersdorf-Gut a series of experiments [titled] Release of atomic energy by reactions between light elements. The experiments failed, according to his own statement; however, they were continued — obviously in secret.

Schumann, Trinks and Diebner explained in patents and publications after the war the scientific and technical way to produce atomic hollow charges. Of course only Diebner went into the details of the need for the addition of fissile material (U²³⁵, U²³³, plutonium). Author H. J. Hajek publicized in 1956 under a pseudonym an article on atomic hollow charges in the journal "Explosives" (Explosivstoffe) (issue 5/6, 1955, pp. 65 ff). Besides that, he referred in the article to work of the French nuclear ministry into atomic hollow charges, which remains inaccessible even today.

VexorAbVikipædia (talk) 23:11, 13 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The article claims that silver, gold, and platinum have been tested as liner materials. I can find a paper that references a paper (A. C. Robinson, “Multilayered liners for shaped charge jets,” Sandia National Laboratories, Tech. Rep. SAND85-2300, 1985) that summarizes a paper that tested gold-lined copper liners (Regan, J.M. and G. H. Jonas, The Generation and Penetration Characteristics of High Density Shaped Charge Jets, BRL Memorandum Report, AD370730, 1965). This paper is listed on DTIC, but not publicly available. I've marked the relevant sentence as citation needed. EnticingCanine (talk) 15:00, 28 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@User:Hohum, with ref to your revert and edits here [[1]] (about an alleged misconception) I wanted first to thank you for not inadvertently reverting the edit I made to a later part of the article. That would have been easy to do and it is a sign of your careful editing that you did not do that. My edit was based around being unconvinced that the alleged misconception was common - it certainly exists (in Forbes^[1] and ABC news^[2] for example). But we'd need a reliable source to say it was a common misconception, and I don't think WW woud be reliable for that judgement (he is clearly highly reliable for the technical aspects of the topic). There is another good - and actually clearer - reference to the misunderstanding in: ^[3] - but from a quick look around I can't find more than a handful of the misinformed newspaper articles etc that William is so keen to debunk.

For the lede we don't need too much detail: I'd suggest something along the lines of:

The penetration effect is purely kinetic, rather than thermodynamic, but the process creates significant heat and often has a significant secondary incendiary effect after penetration.^[4]

Then lower down in the article - I suggest at the end of "Function" - to reflect the second ref:

The shaped charge concept is not well understood by non-specialists who may typically suggest that the jet is a cutting plasma of molten metal at 20,000C and several times the density of steel, which burns its way through armor. This is emphatically not the case.^[5]

What do you think? Springnuts (talk) 21:19, 5 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]