This paper contains the results of a study concerning the thermoelectrical response of a bridgewire fuze head to a d.c. pulse. The experimental part of the study has been performed using a home‐built, improved version of the Thermal Transient Test. The experimental temperature of the bridgewire fuze head as a function of time and current amplitude is described by means of the “fitted wire model”, an extension of the well‐known Rosenthal model. The experimental results are in excellent agreement with the results obtained with the fitted wire model. On the basis of this fitted wire model and postulating a critical temperature of the bridgewire, induction times and energy and power characteristics can be calculated. Furthermore, the model enables the evaluation of the effects of changes in the model parameters upon the functioning of the bridgewire fuze head.
A fully automated improved thermal transient test set is used to measure the thermoelectrical response of a number of different fuze heads. The fitted wire model is used to describe the heat dynamics in the fuze head and to calculate a number of intrinsic thermal properties. These properties are used as input for a parametric analysis of the reliability of igniter systems (PARIS). Comparison of PARIS with firing levels obtained with the classical Robbins–Monro method has been used to validate this new way to estimate the sensitivity of fuze heads.
In this paper a novel method to determine the reliability of a bridgewire fuze head is proposed. It is assumed that a bridgewire will respond positively to a current pulse if the bridgewire temperature exceeds a critical value as a result of the pulse. To calculate the bridgewire temperature the distributions of four thermal parameters that characterize the electrothermal response of a bridgewire fuze head are used. Preliminary results indicate that this novel approach is in agreement with classical methods. Furthermore, one needs to test a limited amount of items and only a fraction of the tested items is destroyed.
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