L-016a Summary of NIMIC 1993 Workshop on Cookoff

The NATO Insensitive Munitions Information Center (NIMIC) held a three-day workshop on Cookoff at NATO HQ in Brussels, Belgium on 23-25 June 1993. Fifty specialists, including the NIMIC staff and delegates from the NIMIC participating nations (CA, FR, NL, UK and US), attended the meeting. The participants represented expertise in cookoff technology from a total of 24 organizations, including 8 from private industries. The primary objectives of the workshop were:

• To determine the most probable or "realistic" cookoff threat scenarios that should be considered in designing an insensitive munition.
• To identify the state of the art in the understanding of cookoff reaction mechanisms, validity of modeling, mitigation, detection and suppression devices.
• To provide a compendium of this data for use in munition development.
• To recommend international cooperative efforts to improve the state of the art identified in Item no. 2 (ie, understanding reaction mechanisms, improve modeling and improve mitigation, detection and suppression devices).

The attendees were divided into four groups to address the following aspects of cookoff.

(1) Threat Hazard Scenarios for Cookoff Acceptance Testing, (2) Mechanistic Understanding and Modeling of Cookoff, (3) Mitigation, Detection and Suppression Devices, (4) Cookoff Protocols.

The primary objectives of the workshop were met and numerous results were obtained. This paper summarizes the approach used to conduct the cookoff workshop, the findings, conclusions and recommendations derived from each group. These recommendations include several fruitful areas for future collaborative works between NIMIC nations. The material presented in this paper has been abstracted from the 325 page NIMIC workshop report which also includes a synopsis of the 36 presentations made at the workshop.