This document presents a compilation of Joint Service test procedures for qualifying primary, booster and main charge explosives for interim development and final application in military end-items. These qualification procedures will be required for any explosive under consideration by any of the military services.

Due to the increased emphasis of explosive safety, the Navy explosive qualification document, NAVSEAINST 8020.5, is being updated to reflect a thorough safety characterization of candidate explosives for use in weapon systems. New requirements in the instruction include an explosive aging protocol, formal explosive selection committees for new weapon systems, and insensitive munitions evaluation on generic test hardware. With increases in joint weapon systems, explosive qualification will involve several domestic and international documents: NAVSEAINST 8020.5, MIL-STD-1751A, STANAG 4170, and other related STANAGs.

Within the U.S. and NATO communities, the terms and concepts of hazard classification, safety, Insensitive Munitions (IM) and qualification testing of all types of explosives including high explosives, propellants and pyrotechnics have caused confusion. It is the intent of this paper to clarify how the each of these terms are related and the testing that they entail. The similarities and differences between test protocols and requirements will be highlighted. In addition to the terms and test requirements, this paper will give the reader an indication of when to conduct the testing within the framework of the acquisition cycle.

It seems that there is no book that treats the measurement of the physical pa rameters of explosives as its only subject, although limited information is avail able in a number of books. Therefore, I have tried to bridge this gap in the lit erature with this book. A large number of various physical parameters have to be determined ex perimentally in order to test or characterise an explosive. Various physical principles have been applied for such measurements. Accordingly, a large number of different experimental methods exist, as well as various testing appa ratuses and procedures. On the other hand, great progress has been made recently in the study of detonation phenomena. New measuring techniques can assess extremely short processes to below nanoseconds scale. They make it possible to determine im portant parameters in detonation physics. I have made a great attempt to cover the available literature data on the subject. Because it would be a highly demanding task to include in a single volume all the methods that are in use by various testing agencies, I have tried to give primarily the principles for determination of individual physical pa rameters of explosives by different measuring methods as well as data treatment procedures.