The objective of this investigation is to describe the thermal response of energetic materials stored in a variety of packaged configurations exposed to real weather conditions. The results can be used to validate current test procedures as well as to provide an estimate of the thermal exposure over the lifecycle of such munitions. Currently, the thermal history of munitions in storage cannot be determined without continuous monitoring of individual components and there is no method that can provide a detailed estimate of the thermal exposure from existing data unless continuous monitoring data is collected, which is not practically feasible.
The present work describes experimental and preliminary numerical investigations of the thermal response of instrumented munitions in earth covered storage. The numerical model has the capability to validate broad trends observed from the experimental data. For this investigation, data is collected through field experiments of inert munitions instrumented with thermocouples that are collocated near a weather station. Data from field experiments are used to develop and validate the numerical model which can save time and resources in future investigations of the thermal exposure of munitions in storage as well as advance the understanding of the implications of selecting a long term storage environment. Moreover, results from the present investigation contribute to the fundamental problem involving combined heat transfer by variable natural convection and radiation within a 3-D enclosure and exposed to external forced convection and radiation with distributed internal energy generation. The numerical model simulates pertinent mechanisms including transient heat transfer to the enclosure (storage structure) by solar radiation, conduction, and forced convection, heat transfer between the enclosure to the packaged energetic materials by radiation, conduction, and natural convection, heat transfer within the packaging by conduction, and distributed thermal energy generation.