This graduate text, and Cooper's companion introductory text ('Introduction to the Technology of Explosives'), serve the same markets as the successful explosives reference by Meyer, now in its 4th edition. VCH also published the International Journal of Propellants, Explosives, and Pyrotechnics. The resulting package would give VCH the major presence in the field. This text presents the basic technologies used in the engineering of explosives and explosive systems, i.e., chemistry, burning, detonation, shock waves, initiation theories, scaling. The book is written for upper-division undergraduate or graduate-level scientists and engineers, and assumes a good grasp of basic physics, chemistry, mechanics and mathematic through calculus. It is based on lecture notes used for graduate courses at the Dept. of Energy Laboratories, and could serve as a core text for a course at schools of mining or military engineering. The intent of the book is to provide the engineer or scientist in the field with an understanding of the phenomena involved and the engineering tools needed to solve/ design/ analyze a broad range of real problems.

The last two decades have seen a steady and impressive development, and eventual industrial acceptance, of the high energy-rate manufact turing techniques based on the utilisation of energy available in an explo sive charge. Not only has it become economically viable to fabricate complex shapes and integrally bonded composites-which otherwise might not have been obtainable easily, if at all-but also a source of reasonably cheap energy and uniquely simple techniques, that often dispense with heavy equipment, have been made available to the engineer and applied scientist. The consolidation of theoretical knowledge and practical experience which we have witnessed in this area of activity in the last few years, combined with the growing industrial interest in the explosive forming, welding and compacting processes, makes it possible and also opportune to present, at this stage, an in-depth review of the state of the art. This book is a compendium of monographic contributions, each one of which represents a particular theoretical or industrial facet of the explosive operations. The contributions come from a number of practising engineers and scientists who seek to establish the present state of knowledge in the areas of the formation and propagation of shock and stress waves in metals, their metallurgical effects, and the methods of experimental assessment of these phenomena.