PRODUCTS OF DETONATION OF TNT.^ 



By CHARLES E. MUNROE and SPENCER P. HOWELL. 



(Read April 23, 1920.) 



The behavior of an explosive and the uses to which it may 

 properly be put depend in a large measure on the form of the reac- 

 tion or reactions it undergoes on explosion and the character of the 

 products of these reactions. Its suitability for use as a propellant, 

 as a bursting charge for shell, or as a blasting charge in demolitions, 

 in land clearing, in mining and in other engineering operations is 

 largely determined by the composition of its products, the rate at 

 w^hich they are evolved, and the temperature they acquire. 



Among the explosives used largely during the recent war none 

 more completely demonstrated its value and efficiency for use in 

 H.E. shell, depth and drop bombs, mines and torpedoes, and for 

 demolitions than TNT, either per se or, for fragmentation purposes, 

 w^hen mixed with ammonium nitrate or sodium nitrate to form the 

 explosives styled amatol and sodatol. The authors from their in- 

 vestigations of the properties of the various surplus military ex- 

 plosives, which were assembled and being produced in large quan- 

 tities as the armistice was declared, with a view to their utilization 

 in civil undertakings, gave it as their opinion^ that TNT, when used 

 as directed, was especially suitable for use in the open. Returns 

 from the National Park Service, Alaskan Engineering Commission, 

 Reclamation Service, Bureau of Public Roads and the College of 

 Agriculture of the University of Wisconsin, to each of which 

 allotments of TNT have been made, and by whom it has been ex- 

 tensively used over a wide extent of area and under most varying 

 climatic conditions, in quarrying, boulder breaking, ditch digging, 

 land clearing and analogous operations, confirm this opinion. It 



1 Published by permission of the Director of the Bureau of Mines. 



2 U. S. Department of Agriculture Circular 94, of 1920: "TNT as a 

 blasting explosive." Charles E. Munroe and Spencer P. Howell. 



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