Explanation of high energetic objects in DSB Prelimanary report : Crash involving Malaysia
Airlines Boeing 777-200 flight MH17, Hrabove, Ukraine 17 July 2014
What are the differences between impacts of different weapons that eject high-energy objects ? 1.) High-energy objects ejected by warheads mounted on Surface-to-Air-Missiles (SAM)/manpads,Airto-Air-Missiles(AA) hit planes with a speed up to 20km/s, that is10 to 30 times as fast like machinegun ammunition does. These shrapnels are so fast that they easily break through material like Aluminium without lots of bursting. Crystalline Metal Structures that accelerating so fast each other (> 8km/s) behave like they would be liquid or gases, the crystalline structures fails immediately. The shrapnels accelerated so fast are also very hot on the surface. This conducts to impact holes only the same size as the shrapnels are. The impact edges looking like molten and have small burnings depending on disposable oxygen. These shrapnels have a diameter of 5-12mm. 2.) High-energy objects ejected by machineguns (aircraft mounted cannons) hit planes with a speed between 0,5 - 1,4 km/s depends on distance and initial velocity. While WW2 until now it is common in nearly all aircraft cannons to shoot different kind of ammunition types in turns: a) Projectiles that enters the target with the speed of cartridge. b) Projectiles exploding close to the target inside or outside with high velocity explained in 1. Damages from type b) may look like damages in 1.) Damages like a) are deforming the target structures in a process of cutting and pressing through the aluminium. There are high tensions in the penetrated structures because the crystalline structure is still intact and has to be shredded by the penetrating object. Aircraft cannon projetiles type a) have a diameter of 20-40 mm. The target shredded structure hast to replace somewhere and more tensions on the edges of impact zone appear. That leads to more bursting, cuttings and deforming arround the impact. Most of that burstings have sharp edges because the replaced materials teared from high tension, There are no meltings or burnings at the tension/replacing damages. Maybe inside the impact zone, depends on disposable oxygen and temperature of projectile and sum of the penetration there are meltings and burnings possible. Here are examples of damages of air cannon ammo: