Laser detonator development for test-firing applications
- Alan C.
- Keith A.
- James E.
- Adrian A.
- Heather L.
Los Alamos National Laboratory has historically fielded two types of electro-explosive detonators. The exploding-bridgewire detonator (EBW) has an exploding wire as the initiating element, a low-density transfer charge and a high-density output pellet. The slapper detonator, or exploding-foil initiator (EFI), utilizes an exploding foil to drive a flying plate element into a high-density output pellet. The last twenty years has seen various research and development activities from many laboratories and manufacturing facilities around the world to develop laser-driven analogs of these devices, but to our knowledge none of those is in general use. Los Alamos is currently committed to design and manufacture a laser analog to the long-standing, generic, general-purpose SE-1 EBW detonator, which is intended to provide increased safety in large-scale test-firing operations. This paper will discuss the major design parameters of this laser detonator and present some preliminary testing results.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE
- OSTI ID:
- 977634
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-04-3145
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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