Customer Reviews

Explosives

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While lacking complex descriptions of explosive concepts, this book provides the user with an invaluable reference guide to the basic concepts behind explosive materials and explosive physics. An invaluable reference guide to a wide variety of commercial and specialty explosive materials, this book is a must have for anyone involved in the field of commercial explosives

This text is best described as being a dictionary of terminology, materials and techniques in the field of explosives. The tables for translating terms between languages are of some use in translating texts. but are too small to be useful to the average translator.

It also suffers from being a translation into English, and thus tends to ignore many of the more obscure technical terms found only in the English language. This can be a problem for more advanced users.

Its coverage of pyrotechnics is very limited. The coverage of this subject is only as it touches explosive materials. This field is closely related to explosives, and often the two overlap. Unfortunately, it does not cover this topic adequately.

Within these limitations, it is a very good reference text to be included in any library on energetic materials. It covers many commercial materials that would require considerable time searching for this data. Being a basically European text, its coverage of this commercial material is primarily european.

I would like to see its coverage expanded, but not its scope, which would make it more of an encyclopedia than a dictionary. Its price also is somewhat high, but considering its' subject mater, not too excessively so.

I recommend it to those working with energetic materials.

I found the book little more than a disorganized glossary of explosives and related terms.
Yes, it does have hundreds of different explosives types listed, many of which are very esoteric and rare. And it does contain good thermodynamic data for many explosives.
But the explosives, terms, and safety data are all lumped together and only classified alphabetically in a single group.
Coverage is spotty. For example, black powder gets good coverage (relative to the overall superficial coverage of all subjects), while TNT is barely mentioned. Prills are covered in some detail while nitrification isn't even mentioned. Manufacturing techniques and intermediate reactions are at most just a few sentences, even for important commercial explosives.
All the information contained in the book can easily be found on the Internet or at your local library, and in much better detail.

A little more than a dictionary, rather less than an encyclopedia, but really handy to get a quick look at properties. First place I found TATP when I looked for it after it appeared in the news.