Changes to the LANL gas-driven two-stage gun: Magnetic gauge instrumentation, etc.

Our gas-driven two-stage gun was designed and built to do initiation studies on insensitive high explosives as well as other equation of state experiments on inert materials. Our preferred method of measuring initiation phenomena involves the use of magnetic particle velocity gauges. In order to accommodate this type of gauging in our two-stage gun, projectile velocity was sacrificed in favor of a larger experimental target area (obtained by using a 50 mm diameter launch tube). We have used magnetic gauging on our 72-mm bore diameter single-stage gun for over 15 years and it has proven a very effective technique to monitor reactive shock wave evolution. This technique has now been adapted to our gas-driven two-stage gun. We describe the method used, as well as some of the difficulties that arose while installing this technique. Several magnetic gauge experiments have been completed on plastic materials. Waveforms obtained in one experiment are given, along with the Hugoniot information that was obtained. This new technique is now working quite well, as is evidenced by the data. To our knowledge, this is the first time magnetic gauging has been used on a two-stage gun. We have also made changes to the burst diaphragm package in the transition section to ensure that the petals do not break off during the opening process and to increase the burst pressure. This will also be discussed briefly.