A series of ten arena experiments with pre-fragmented steel spherical caps was performed equipped for detailed measurements. The results show that when more than one layer of fragments is driven by an explosive, a deficient fragment beam is obtained compared to the fragments beam obtained from one layer. The statistics of the fragments beam dependence on the number of pre fragmented layers show a strong effect of the number of layers used on the fragment beam parameters. This effect is explained as resulting from the fact that the fragments pressed by the explosion wave front pressure, act like elastically loaded springs that when getting their elastic energy unloaded act on the neighboring layers, thus changing the average velocity of individual fragments. This velocity change is often so strong that some of the fragments lose most of the average kinetic energy they would be expected to have if the shock waves effect had not existed.
References
[1] Layered Fragmentation Device - Patent 4106410
