A Novel Method for Creating Microshear to Aerosolize Packed Powders

Our approach involves three distinct concepts designed to create forced instabilities that produce microjets for enhanced dispersal of the particle fill in the annular region to produce an aerosol cloud with improved effectiveness. The first concept involves introducing a regular pattern of spherical indentations around the cylindrical center burster charge at a spacing that closely matches the expected naturally occurring Richymeyer-Meskov (RM) instabilities. The second concept is an annular burster charge to replace the solid burster charge. An annular imploding charge is known to produce an additional geometric and hydrodynamic instability, known as the Bell-Plesset instability that should add increased mixing/dispersion of the obscurant. This design will also introduce two-stage acceleration where the first stage is ?soft? so as to prevent shock consolidation followed by a later acceleration similar to that produced by a gun propellant. The third concept is a liner, which could contain holes, recessed areas or raised areas. This ?notched liner? concept is known to produce strong, localized high pressures and velocities. An advantage of our approach is that it uses current HE burster designs with minor modifications to fielded grenades, e.g. M76 and M106.