Plenary Lecture

The Fluid Mechanics of the Shaped Charge

Prof. John P. Curtis C. Math FIMA C Phys FInstP C Sci MIE
UCL Honorary Senior Research Fellow
Royal Society Industry Fellow
QinetiQ Fellow
Room 21, Building Q27
Fort Halstead
Sevenoaks
Kent TN14 7BP
UK

Abstract: Shaped charges are used in many civil and military applications ranging from oil well perforation to anti-tank weapons. Fluid mechanics has been invaluable in providing simple but effective descriptions of the fundamental physical processes involved in the formation of a shaped charge jet, its stability and break-up, and finally in its penetration of a target. In this talk these physical processes will first be described in overview. Then the fluid mechanics of jet formation will be discussed, in particular addressing the problem of asymmetric jet formation, which is very important in applications where the penetration of the jet is to be maximised. The use of incompressible and compressible flow models to address jet coherency and penetration will then be briefly reviewed. Some outstanding problems on which work is ongoing will be described and a potentially vital surprise application will conclude the talk.

Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Following his first degree in mathematics at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Dr Curtis took an MSc in Theoretical Mechanics at the University Of East Anglia, Norwich, and continued there to complete his PhD on Optimisation in Continuum Mechanics. He had a spell as a spacecraft engineer at British Aerospace, working on the Ulysses and Hubble Space Telescope missions, before joining Scicon to undertake mathematical modelling research on shaped charges. In 1996 he joined QinetiQ, where he has continued his work in this field, publishing papers on all aspects of shaped charge jet mechanics. He was appointed a QinetiQ Fellow in 1996 and is also a Fellow of both the UK Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and of the Institute of Physics. Recently he has been awarded a Royal Society Industry Fellowship and has been appointed Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Mathematics Department at UCL, working in collaboration with Professor Frank Smith FRS.