Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Gunpowder is well suited for blank rounds, signal flares, burst charges, and rescue-line launches. It is also used in fireworks for lifting shells, in rockets as fuel, and in certain special effects. Combustion converts less than half the mass of gunpowder to gas; most of it turns into particulate matter.
A 1682 demonstration of Huygens gunpowder engine, where a dram of gunpowder creates enough vacuum to lift 8 boys into the air. Huygens, however, became interested in the mechanical power of the vacuum, and the possibility of using gunpowder to produce one. In 1678 he outlined a gunpowder engine consisting of a vertical tube containing a piston ...
Finnish smokeless powder. Smokeless powder is a type of propellant used in firearms and artillery that produces less smoke and less fouling when fired compared to black powder. Because of their similar use, both the original black powder formulation and the smokeless propellant which replaced it are commonly described as gunpowder.
Black powder produces gas at a predictable rate unaffected by pressure, while the gas production rate of smokeless powder increases with increasing pressure. [6] The possibility of runaway pressures caused smokeless powder to destroy many firearms designed for black powder and required much more precise measurement of propellant charges.
A torpedo is an explosive device used, especially in the early days of the petroleum industry, to fracture the surrounding rock at the bottom of an oil well to stimulate the flow of oil and to remove built-up paraffin wax that would restrict the flow. Earlier torpedoes used gunpowder, but the use of nitroglycerin eventually
Torpex was developed at the Royal Gunpowder Factory, Waltham Abbey, in the United Kingdom as a more powerful military alternative to TNT. RDX was developed in 1899. Though very stable and serving as the reference point by which the sensitivity of other explosives are judged, it was too expensive for most military applications and reserved for use in the most important products, such as ...
Faversham, in Kent, England, has claims to be the cradle of the UK's explosives industry: it was also to become one of its main centres.The first gunpowder plant in the UK was established in the 16th century, possibly at the instigation of the abbey at Faversham.
Black powder rocket propellant is very similar in makeup to old-fashioned gunpowder. The main difference is the presence of a binder, usually dextrin. The commonly used Estes model rocket engines are made with black powder propellant. [2] Black powder propellant must be pressed very tightly in order to function well.