EVALUATING THE IGNITION SENSITIVITY OF THERMAL-BATTERY HEAT PELLETS

Thermal batteries are activated by the ignition of heat pellets. If th e heat pellets are not sensitive enough to the ignition stimulus, the thermal battery will not activate, resulting in a dud. Thus, to assure reliable thermal batteries, it is important to demonstrate that the p ellets have satisfactory ignition sensitivity by testing multiple spec imens. There are many statistical methods for evaluating the sensitivi ty of a device to some stimulus. Generally, these methods are applicab le to the situation in which a single test is destructive to the speci men being tested, independent of the outcome of the test. In the case of thermal-battery heat pellets, however, tests that result in a nonre sponse do not totally degrade the specimen. This peculiarity provides opportunities to efficiently evaluate the ignition sensitivity of heat pellets, In this article, a simple strategy for evaluating heat-pelle t ignition sensitivity (including experimental design and data analysi s) is described. The relatively good asymptotic and small-sample effic iencies of this strategy are demonstrated.