Characterization of the thermal response of energetic material in iso shipping container storage

This work describes the experimental and numerical investigation of instrumented munitions in an ISO standard 20 foot storage container to characterize the thermal response of the storage area and munitions. The numerical model has the capability to validate broad trends observed in the experimentally collected data. For this investigation, data is being collected through field experiments of the storage structure and inert munitions instrumented with thermocouples that are collocated near a weather station. Data from field experiments will be used to develop and validate numerical models. The numerical model will 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. This work will contribute to the advancement of combined heat transfer of energetic materials in several packaged configurations by variable natural convection and radiation in a 3-D enclosure with external heat transfer driven by forced convection and radiation with distributed internal thermal storage that is validated with experimental results. The numerical model will have several characteristics including 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 internal to the packaging by conduction, distributed thermal energy storage in packages, and transient temperature of the enclosure walls as the temperature is driven by the path and intensity of the forced convection, and radiation.