“Oh, no!” we were told, “That is not enough, we need to know how safe it is!” Which meant we had to determine, for each explosive we were likely to find, the waterjet pressure at which it reacted. (i.e. went BANG!) This meant that we had to fire water jets at pressures that ultimately reached 10 million psi (at which point all the explosives tested got seriously annoyed) to cover the field of response.
Once that safety level had been established then we could determine the pressures required to wash out the munitions, and from that design a tool to carry out the washout. We called the first one, WOMBAT, and here is a short video showing it in being used to clean out a SPARROW warhead.
Figure 1. Description of a Washout
The program examined a number of different approaches for different munitions, and we worked with Wilkes University in PA to build a full scale washout facility for shells, that was installed at the Navy facility in Crane, IN – but I’ll show that, and movies of the development of a capability to cut into sealed munitions, in later posts.