Warhead: what's inside and how it works after separation from the rocket
Take a look at some typical warhead (in reality, there may be constructive differences between warheads). This is a cone of lightweight durable alloys. Inside there are bulkheads, frames, power cage - almost everything is like in an airplane. The power frame is covered with durable metal plating. A thick layer of heat-resistant coating is applied to the casing. It looks like an ancient Neolithic basket, richly plastered with clay and burned in the first experiments of man with heat and ceramics. The similarity is easily explained: both the basket and the warhead will have to resist external heat.
Warhead and its stuffing
Inside the cone, mounted on their "seats", there are two main "passengers" for which everything is started: a thermonuclear charge and a charge control unit, or an automation unit. They are strikingly compact. The automation unit is about the size of a five-liter jar of pickled cucumbers, and the charge is about an ordinary garden bucket. Heavy and weighty, the union of banks and buckets will explode kilotons for three hundred fifty - four hundred. Two passengers are connected by a connection, like Siamese twins, and through this connection they constantly exchange something. Their dialogue is ongoing all the time, even when the rocket is on combat duty, even when these twins are only being taken from the manufacturing enterprise.
became the ancestor of a large family of space rockets, which made a huge contribution to the development of manned space flight. The newest modifications of the Soyuz rocket are the only means of crew delivery to the ISS.
There is a third passenger - a unit measuring the movement of a warhead or in general controlling its flight. In the latter case, working controls are built into the warhead to change the trajectory. For example, executive pneumatic systems or powder systems. And on-board electrical grid with power sources, communication lines with a step, in the form of protected wires and connectors, protection against electromagnetic impulses and temperature control system - to maintain the desired charge temperature.
After leaving the bus, the warheads continue to gain altitude while simultaneously rushing towards targets. They rise to the highest points of their trajectories, and then, without slowing down the horizontal flight, they begin to roll down faster and faster. At a height of exactly one hundred kilometers above sea level, each warhead crosses the formally designated human boundary of outer space. Ahead of the atmosphere!
Electric wind
Below, in front of the warhead, there was a huge, contrastingly brilliant from terrible high heights, covered with a blue oxygen haze, covered with aerosol suspensions, a boundless and boundless fifth ocean. Slowly and barely noticeably turning from the residual effects of separation, the warhead continues its descent along a gentle trajectory. But to meet her quietly pulled a very unusual breeze. Slightly touched her - and became noticeable, he fitted the hull with a thin, backward wave of a pale white-blue glow. This wave is breathtakingly high-temperature, but it still does not burn the warhead, because it is too outdated. The breeze blowing around the warhead is electrically conductive. The speed of the cone is so high that it literally breaks up air molecules into electrically charged fragments, and impact ionization of air occurs. This plasma breeze is called the hypersonic flow of large Mach numbers, and its speed is twenty times the speed of sound.
Because of the great rarefaction, the breeze is almost invisible in the first seconds. Growing and compacted with a dimple into the atmosphere, it first heats more than it presses on the warhead. But gradually it begins to compress its cone with force. The tide spins the warhead forward. It does not turn right away - the cone swings slightly back and forth, gradually slowing down its vibrations, and finally stabilizes.
Hypersound Heat
Compacted as it descends, the flow is increasingly pressing on the warhead, slowing its flight. With deceleration, the temperature gradually decreases. From the enormous values of the beginning of the entrance, the white and blue glow of tens of thousands of kelvins, to the yellow and white shine of five to six thousand degrees. This is the temperature of the surface layers of the sun. The shine becomes blinding because the air density is growing rapidly, and with it the heat flux into the walls of the warhead. The heat shield is charred and starts to burn.
It does not burn from friction about the air, as it is often wrongly said. Because of the enormous hypersonic speed of movement (now fifteen times faster than sound) from the top of the hull, another cone diverges in the air - shock-wave, as if enclosing a warhead. The incoming air, getting inside the shock-wave cone, is instantly compacted many times and tightly pressed against the surface of the warhead. From intermittent, instantaneous and repeated compression, its temperature immediately jumps to several thousand degrees. The reason for this is the crazy speed of what is happening, the transcendent dynamism of the process. Gas-dynamic flow compression, not friction — this is what warms the sides of the warhead now.
numbering ten warheads. Missile decommissioned. Ballistic missiles with split warheads from the Americans are installed only on submarines.
The worst part is the bow. There is the greatest compaction of the oncoming flow. The area of this seal slightly moves forward, as if detaching from the body. And held in front, taking the form of a thick lens or pillow. This formation is called the “detached head shock wave”. It is several times thicker than the rest of the surface of the shock-wave cone around the warhead. The frontal compression of the incoming flow is the strongest here. Therefore, in the disconnected head shock wave the highest temperature and the highest heat density. This little sun burns the nose of the warhead in a radiant way - flashing, radiating heat from itself right into the nose of the hull and causing a strong burning of the nose. Therefore, there is the thickest layer of thermal protection. It is the head shock wave that illuminates the terrain at night for miles around a warhead flying in the atmosphere.
The sides become very hard. They are now also fried unbearable shine from the head shock wave. And burns hot compressed air, turned into a plasma from crushing its molecules. However, at such a high temperature, the air is ionized and simply from heating - its molecules disintegrate into pieces from the heat. It turns out a mixture of shock-ionization and temperature plasma. By the action of friction, this plasma grinds the burning surface of thermal protection, like sand or sandpaper. Gas-dynamic erosion occurs, which consumes a heat-shielding coating.
At this time, the warhead passed the upper limit of the stratosphere - the stratopause - and enters the stratosphere at an altitude of 55 km. It moves now with a hypersonic speed of ten to twelve times faster than sound.
The photograph shows the fall of the divided warheads of the American MX missile in the area of the Kwajalein Atoll range in the Pacific Ocean. This can be observed only during the test. Real nuclear warheads would not have reached the ground, undermining the charge at an altitude of several hundred meters.
Inhuman overload
Severe burning changes the geometry of the nose. The stream, like a sculptor's chisel, burns out in a nasal covering a pointed central projection. Other surface features appear due to burnout irregularities. Changes in shape lead to changes in flow. This changes the pressure distribution of compressed air on the surface of the warhead and the temperature field. There are variations in the force effect of the air compared to the calculated flow around, which gives rise to the deviation of the drop point - a slip is formed. Albeit small - let's say two hundred meters, but the heavenly projectile will hit the enemy’s missile shaft with a deviation. Or not fall at all.
In addition, the pattern of shock-wave surfaces, head waves, pressures and temperatures is constantly changing. The speed gradually decreases, but the air density quickly increases: the cone falls lower and lower into the stratosphere. Due to the uneven pressures and temperatures on the surface of the warhead, due to the speed of their changes, thermal shocks may occur. From the heat-shielding coating they are able to break off pieces and pieces, which makes new changes in the pattern of flow. And increases the deviation of the drop point.
At the same time, the warhead can enter into spontaneous frequent rocking, changing the direction of this rocking from “up-down” to “left-right” and back. These self-oscillations create local accelerations in different parts of the warhead. Accelerations vary in direction and magnitude, complicating the impact pattern experienced by the warhead. It receives more loads, asymmetry of shock waves around itself, uneven temperature fields and other small charms, instantly growing into big problems.
But this does not exhaust the incoming flow. Because of such a powerful pressure of oncoming compressed air, the warhead is experiencing a huge braking effect. There is a large negative acceleration. The warhead with all entrails is in a rapidly growing overload, and it is impossible to escape from overload.
Astronauts do not experience such overloads at lower. The manned vehicle is less streamlined and filled inside is not as tight as a warhead. Astronauts and not in a hurry to descend quickly. The warhead is weapon. She must reach the goal as soon as possible, until they hit. And the more difficult it is to intercept it, the faster it flies. The cone is the figure of the best supersonic flow. Retaining high speed to the lower atmosphere, the warhead encounters there a very large inhibition. That is why we need strong bulkheads and power frame. And comfortable “seats” for two riders - otherwise it will be thrown off from the places of overload.
Siamese twins dialogue
By the way, what about these riders? The time has come to remember the main passengers, because they are not sitting passively now, but are going through their own difficult path, and their dialogue becomes more meaningful in these very moments.
The charge during transportation is taken apart. When mounted in a warhead, it is assembled, and installing a warhead in a rocket, it is equipped to full combat configuration (a pulsed neutron initiator is inserted, equipped with detonators, etc.). The charge is ready to fly to the target aboard the warhead, but is not yet ready to explode. The logic here is clear: constant readiness of the charge for the explosion is not needed and theoretically dangerous.
In a state of readiness for an explosion (near the target), it is necessary to translate it with complex sequential algorithms based on two principles: reliability of movement to the explosion and control over the process. The detonation system strictly charges the charge to ever higher levels of readiness. And when the combat command comes to the blasting unit from the control unit, the explosion will occur immediately, instantly. A warhead flying at the speed of a sniper's bullet will pass only a couple of hundredths of a millimeter, not having time to shift in space even by the thickness of a human hair, when its charge begins, develops, completely terminates and is completed thermonuclear reaction, highlighting all the standard power.
Final flash
Having greatly changed both outside and inside, the warhead passed into the troposphere - the last ten kilometers in height. She slowed down a lot. Hypersonic flight degenerated into supersonic three-four Mach units. The warhead is already dim, fading away and approaching the target point.
An explosion on the surface of the Earth is rarely planned - only for objects that are sunk into the earth like rocket mines. Most goals lie on the surface. And for their greatest destruction, an explosion is carried out at a certain height depending on the power of the charge. For tactical twenty kilotons this is 400 − 600 m. For a strategic megaton, the optimum height of the explosion is 1200 m. Why? From the explosion on the ground are two waves. Closer to the epicenter of the blast wave will collapse earlier. It will fall and be reflected, rebounding to the sides, where it will merge with the fresh wave that has just come down from above, from the point of the explosion. Two waves - falling from the center of the explosion and reflected from the surface - are added together, forming in the surface layer the most powerful shock wave, the main factor of the damage.
With test launches, the warhead usually reaches the ground unhindered. On board is a half centner of explosives, exploded during a fall. What for? First, the warhead is a secret object and must be safely destroyed after use. Secondly, it is necessary for landfill measuring systems - for the rapid detection of the drop point and the measurement of deviations.
A multimeter smoking funnel completes the picture. But before that, a couple of kilometers before the strike, a test device of the storage device was fired from the test warhead with a record of everything that was recorded on board during the flight. This armored vehicle will protect against loss of onboard information. It will be found later when the helicopter arrives with a special search group. And record the results of a fantastic flight.
The first intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead
The Soviet R-7 became the first in the world of an ICBM with a nuclear warhead. She carried one three-megaton warhead and could hit objects at a distance of 11 000 km (modification 7-A). The brainchild of S.P. Although Korolev was put into service, it turned out to be ineffective as a military rocket due to the impossibility of being on duty for a long time without additional refueling with an oxidizer (liquid oxygen). But P-7 (and its numerous modifications) played a prominent role in space exploration.
The first head of the ICBM with shared warheads
The first in the world of ICBMs with a split head was the American rocket LGM-30 Minuteman III, the deployment of which began in the 1970 year. Compared with the previous modification, the combat unit W-56 was replaced by three light combat units W-62, set to the breeding level. Thus, a rocket could hit three separate targets or concentrate all three warheads on one strike. Currently, on all the Minuteman III missiles in the framework of the disarmament initiative, only one combat unit is left.
Variable power warhead
Since the beginning of the 1960-ies, technologies for creating variable-capacity thermonuclear warheads have been developed. These include, for example, the W80 warhead, which was installed, in particular, on the Tomahawk missile. These technologies were created for thermonuclear charges built according to the Teller-Ulam scheme, where the fission reaction of uranium or plutonium isotopes triggers a fusion reaction (i.e., a thermonuclear explosion). The change in power occurred by amending the interaction of the two stages. It makes sense to control the power of the warhead depending on the type of target and the firing distance.
- Nikolay Tsygikalo
- http://www.popmech.ru/weapon/238047-boegolovka-chto-vnutri-i-kak-ona-rabotaet-posle-otdeleniya-ot-rakety/
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