Journal articles on the topic 'Explosive-mechanical destruction'

Drilling and blasting operations are one of the most important components of the mining industry. Currently, further improvement and optimization of technological processes at mining enterprises are possible mainly due to the determination and constant monitoring of the mining and technological properties of the rock mass – their drillability, explosivity and exaviability. A prospective assessment of the explosivity of rocks in the massif, which is the basis for designing and calculating the parameters of the DBO, is currently possible only using the energy parameters of technological work. The article provides information on methods for studying the strength and elastic characteristics of rocks in natural occurrence. The results of the study of the relationship between the specific energy intensity of drilling and explosive destruction of rocks are presented. The correlation between the specific energy intensity of drilling and the propagation velocity of elastic longitudinal waves is also considered. A comparative analysis is carried out between the traditional calculation of the explosive index using the results of laboratory studies on the physical and mechanical properties of the rocks of the Koktaszhal deposit and the calculation of the explosive destruction index taking into account the energy parameters of drilling. The validity of the use of the specific energy intensity of drilling as a criterion characterizing the explosive destruction of rocks in the design of drilling and blasting operations is shown.

The factors affecting the energy explosion loss on rock crushing on con-tact with explosives have been established. This makes it possible to substantiate ways to increase low explosion efficiency. Theoretical estimates of the explosion energy losses during the rocks destruction have been carried out taking into account the explosives properties and heterogeneities in the rocks structure. It has been established that homogeneities in the form of mineral grains of various strengths determine the mechanism of their destruction and crushing during blusting. A thermodynamic loss has been estimated during the expansion of gaseous detonation products, on which the maximum explosion work depends. These losses characterize the theoretical possibility of the transfer of energy stored in an explosive into mechanical work. The explosion losses associated with the origination of shock waves in rocks are also have been determined.

The influence of the nuclei of the liquid phase arising during mechanical deformations of polycrystalline ice at temperatures below -40 ... -45 C on its explosive instability is considered. The nucleus of the liquid phase appear in ice when part of the hydrogen bonds are broken when high pressure is applied to ice crystals. The resulting clusters can have characteristics close to those of bulk metastable water. It is known that such water in the region of negative temperatures has anomalous thermodynamic characteristics. In particular, at a temperature of -60 C and a pressure of 100 MPa, there is a second critical point of water for the liquid-liquid transition. It was found that the transition occurs between the two types of water LDL (low density water) and HDL (high density water), with the Widom line coming out into the one-component region of the water phase diagram. This line is the locus of increased fluctuations in entropy and density. Near atmospheric pressure, the temperature on the Widom line is -45 C. If the pressure inside the ice and its temperature turn out to be close to the line of coexistence of LDL and HDL, then liquid inhomogeneities can become a source of mechanical instability of the medium due to the growth of fluctuations in the energy of molecules and destruction of the ice structure. Such conditions can occur at temperatures below -45 C and pressures above 100 MPa.

The most accessible and popular means of destruction of rocks, which are used in the extraction of ores, non-metallic minerals, mining and chemical raw materials, are the cheap explosives, in the Russian technical literature called granulites or AS-DT, in the foreign — ANFO. The article presents the research carried out to improve the formulation and explosive properties of granulites A6, Igdanit, Igdanit-P, A3. They are aimed at using the modern raw material base, increasing the efficiency of blasting, the safety of manufacturing and loading drill holes and boreholes, maintaining a balanced composition, and preserving physical stability, providing energy potential with secondary aluminum additives. Further development of granulites is aimed at creating a line of formulations using saltpeter with variable technical parameters, mixed fuels in the form of liquid (waste oil products, fuel mixtures, diesel fuel) and solid (coal powder, coke fines, rubber crumbs) phases. Based on the use of the cheap explosives in the formulation of recycling materials formed at the mining enterprises, blasting technologies are being improved, and mixing and charging equipment is being developed. The proposed approaches are aimed at maintaining high technical and economic indicators of the use of explosives, ensuring the stationarity of the explosive process and the completeness of detonation of granulites reducing the sensitivity to mechanical and thermal influences, and maintaining susceptibility to initiation by practical means of an explosive pulse. When compiling the new formulations of granulites to reduce production costs, it is proposed to use the most economical types of oxidants and fuels with ensuring quality control of mixing components with different technological properties and conditioning the temperature-viscosity properties of the waste oil products.

The article is devoted to the study and development of the components of gas generator compositions based on the ammonium nitrate to improve safety of blasting operations. This is primarily due to the low cost of ammonium nitrate, low sensitivity to mechanical and detonation effects and a significantly lower content of harmful compounds in the combustion products compared to the analogues. PA-4 aluminum powder was used as fuel, carbon black powder — as a gas-forming agent. The effect was studied concerning different amounts of aluminum powder on the combustion characteristics of a gas generator composition based on the ammonium nitrate. Calculated and experimental data showed that it is unreasonable to introduce more than 5 % of aluminum into the composition. According to the results of the conducted study, a gas generator composition based on the ammonium nitrate was developed to increase blasting operations efficiency and safety. Laboratory and polygon studies confirmed the efficiency and safety of using gas generator compositions at the destruction of stone. Destruction of the stone occurred without scattering of individual fragments, formation, and propagation of an air shock wave. Thus, the urgent task is to ensure blasting operations safety using gas generator compositions, which will allow to eliminate the formation of harmful, toxic gases and the high explosive effect.

The article addresses selected aspects of supporting the mobility of the Ground Forces in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. The experience of contemporary armed conflicts in which Russian forces were involved confirmed the need to maintain subunits, guaranteeing maneuver freedom in the area occupied by the enemy. The study aims to present explanations concerning: the role and tasks of the engineering troops of the Russian Federation in contemporary armed conflicts, characteristics of the currently used methods of performing mine barriers, namely mechanical, electromechanical, explosive, manual, and combined ones. Also, the essence of engineering activities according to the views adopted in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the content of engineering support for mobility in tactical departments, and the interpretation of basic concepts, and the role of engineering units and subunits in the activities in question are presented. Besides, the executive potential of selected organizational and functional structures of engineering units, their purpose, and the possibility of implementing individual engineering tasks in tactical activities related to maneuvering and displacement are described. In the aspect of the issue of the impact of engineering barriers and destruction on the pace of the enemy’s attack, an analysis of the execution potential and tactics of operations (doctrinal patterns of combat operations) of a potential enemy (the other party and its capability of supporting the mobility of own troops in the implementation of engineering projects related to crossings (paving) in dams, through natural obstacles and areas of destruction as well as demining terrain and objects) was performed.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to obtain the mechanical behavior and damage mechanism of the coal and rock near the stope under the stress state and stress paths of the surrounding rock with the dynamic mining. Design/methodology/approach Through the three-axial compression test and the uniaxial compression test by meso experiment device, the mechanical behavior and fracture evolution process of coal and rock were studied, and the acoustic emission (AE) characteristics under uniaxial compression of the coal and rock were contrasted. Findings Under the three-axial compression, the strength of coal and rock enhance significantly by confining pressure. The volume of outburst coal shows obvious stages: compression is followed by expansion. The coal first appear to undergo compaction under vertical stress due to volume decrease, but with the development of micro- and macro-cracks, the specimens appeared to expand; under the uniaxial compression, through the comparison of stress–strain relationship and the crack propagation process, stress drop and fracture of coal have obvious correlation. The destruction of coal was gradual due to the slow and steady accumulation of internal damage. Due to the influence of the end effect, the specimens show the “conjugate double shear failure”. The failure process of the coal and rock and the characteristics of the AEs have a corresponding relationship: the failure causes a large number of AE events. Before the events peak, there was an initial stage, calm growth stage and explosive growth stage. There were some differences between the rock and coal in the characteristics of the AE. Originality/value These research studies are conducted to provide guidance on the basis of mine disaster prevention and control.

Purpose is mathematical modeling of fracturing as well as influence of gaseous products of explosive detonation on the changes in rock strength. Methods. Mathematical model, using foundations of Griffith theory, has been developed. To explain conditions of bridge formation while exploding lead azide charges, a two-stage description of solid particle condensation at a crack surface and inside it has been applied using the smoothed particle hydrodynamics. The analysis, involved electronic microscope, has helped verified the results experimentally. Findings. The effect of rock mass disturbance, resulting from explosive destruction, is manifested maximally right after the action. Subsequently, it decreases owing to the gradual relaxation of the formed defects. Therefore, an urgent problem is to develop ways slowing down strength restore of the blasted rock mass fragments. The process of rock fragment strength restoring may be prevented by microparticles getting into the microcrack cavities together with the detonation products. The research simulates their action. The data correlate to the simulation results confirming potential influence of the blasted rock on the dynamics of changes in the strength characteristics of the rock mass. Various compositions of charges with shells made of inert solid additions have been applied which solid particles can avoid the process of microcrack closure. Originality. For the first time, the possibility of deposition formation within rock micro- and macrocracks has been proposed and supported mathematically. Practical implications. Strength properties of the finished product and the energy consumption during impulse loading as well as subsequent mechanical processing of nonmetallic building materials depend on the strength properties of rock mass fragments. Hence, the ability to control the strength restore has a great practical value. Moreover, it can be implemented during the blasting operations.

Three-dimensional printing is becoming increasingly popular because of its extensive applicability. However, printing materials remain limited. To determine the mechanical properties of polylactic acid (PLA) and copper powder-filled polylactic acid (PLA-Cu) materials subjected to static and dynamic loading, stress–strain curves were obtained under the conditions of different strain rates using a universal material testing machine and a separated Hopkinson pressure bar experimental device. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to analyze the micro-morphology of the quasi-static compression fracture and dynamic impact sections. The results revealed that the yield stress and elastic modulus of the two materials increased with increasing strain rate. When the strain rate reached a critical point of 0.033 s−1, the rate of crack propagation in the PLA samples increased, resulting in the material undergoing a change from ductile to brittle. The strength of the material subjected to dynamic loading was significantly higher than that subjected to quasi-static loading. The SEM image of the PLA-Cu material revealed that copper powder was evenly distributed throughout the 3D-printed sample and that stress initially began to concentrate at the defect site corresponding to the interface between the copper powder and PLA matrix; this resulted in comparatively lower toughness. This finding was consistent with the photographs captured via high-speed photography, which confirmed that the destruction of the specimen was accompanied by an explosive crushing process. Additionally, a Zhu–Wang–Tang constitutive model was used to fit the experimental results and establish a viscoelastic constitutive model of the material. By comparing the dynamic stress–strain curve to the theoretically predicted curve, we found that the established constitutive model could predict the mechanical properties of the PLA-Cu material with reasonable accuracy when the strain was below 7%.

Introduction. Currently, the main raw material for obtaining transparent quartz glass, an indispensable component in the production of single-crystal silicon, is high-purity quartz concentrate. The concentrate is a product of grinding natural “pure” quartz, which has undergone a cycle of mechanical and deep chemical refining, with a particle size of 0.1–0.3 mm and a total impurity content of no more than 20–30 ppm. However, in nature, deposits of pure quartz are quite rare, and it means that each explored site is of particular importance and is to be developed with minimal losses of quartz raw materials. Research aim is to develop technical solutions for processing small veins of high-purity granulated quartz. Methodology. Physical and mechanical properties and mining conditions for the individual quartz veins of the Kyshtym deposit are analyzed. Production cycle solutions for opencasting quartz veins have been developed allowing to reduce the degree of quartz over-grinding. Results. Granulated quartz, due to its structure, has the property of “avalanche” destruction into small grains. This significantly reduces the yield of the conditioned fraction –400 +20 mm, and regarding small reserves of quartz in veins, on average 0.1–2 thousand tons, it raises the question as to whether the development is feasible and effective. To increase the yield of conditioned fractions of quartz raw materials, a non-explosive technology of quartz breaking is proposed with a hydraulic hammer on a hydraulic excavator in combination with quartz vein preliminary exposure from the host rocks using a special technology for blasting rocks in the contact zone of “quartz-rock”. Conclusions. The proposed technical solutions will allow to involve small quartz veins of high purity granulated quartz into the development and provide high productivity and efficiency of mining operations without significant losses of scarce raw materials.

Relevance of the work. Cryovolcanic phenomena in the permafrost zone of the Earth are at the very initial stage of study. Purpose of this paper is to form and study theoretical ideas about the nature and mechanism of formation of a cylindrical vent in order to obtain scientifically substantiated knowledge that can subsequently be useful in developing the methodology and content of field studies, laboratory experiments and predictive calculations. The implementation of this goal is based on the main working hypotheses of the formation of the studied cryogenic volcano and the cryogenic processes that caused it in the permafrost massif: gassing (gas saturation) associated with the existence of stratal underground ice and the response of permafrost to climate fluctuations; degassing, accompanied by pneumatic release of rock and ice to the adjacent territory. Attention is also drawn to a hypothesis based on the concept of the migration and accumulation of hydrocarbons in the permafrost strata as a result of macro- and micro-seepage of gases, leading to the formation of near-surface redox zones favorable for the biodegradation of hydrocarbons with the formation of secondary microbial gases, primarily, methane. Methodology of research provides for a comparative analysis of characteristics of the composition and properties of homogeneous elements of the object under study, identified as a result of primary measurements and visual examinations and presented theoretical hypotheses. Results of work and scope of their application made it possible to reveal the theoretical prerequisites for substantiating the hypothesis about the complex nature of the formation of a cylindrical vent of a cryogenic volcano, which is expressed by a combination of long-term mechanical and thermobiochemical processes in permafrost. Conclusions. The authors put forward a hypothesis about the significant contribution of biochemical processes with the participation of hydrocarbons, including in the liquid phase, in the formation of a primary cavity (vent) of a regular cylindrical shape in the rock mass at the stages preceding the explosive outburst of crater rocks. As an interconnected one, the authors theoretically substantiated the hypothesis of the formation of a meromictic reservoir with an established unmixed stratified anaerobic deep part in the cryovolcano vent after the explosive destruction of the heaving mound. An explanation of the nature of the source of gas ignition (from a spark formed during the collision of solid rock fragments at the time of cryovolcanic outburst of rocks), as well as the ferroelectric effect that occurs during deformation of frozen rocks is presented. Keywords: permafrost, ice, permafrost mound, cryovolcanism, vent, thermobiochemical process.

The article continues the author’s series of works on the application of synergetic theory to understand and describe the processes and phenomena that accompany the search and development of mineral resources. The research results show that the synergetic theory is universal and allows to understand and describe a wide range of phenomena and processes that occur in geological exploration and mining: dynamic phenomena in mines (outbursts of rocks and coal), spontaneous сombustion of сoal in coal mines, emergency outbursts of oil and gas from exploration wells, destruction of high-pressure pipelines, geodynamic phenomena in quaternary deposits, sedimentary rocks, and in the geological structures of the crystalline basement. One of the signs of processes and phenomena that have a synergistic nature is the nonlinear nature of the system’s response to weak perturbations. Minor disturbances slightly change the structure of geological material, in some cases change the mechanical and physical properties of formation fiuids. This creates the conditions for disturbing the unstable equilibrium of the system at the bifurcation points and its transition to another equilibrium state with other thermodynamic parameters that characterize the new state of the system. Such transitions are characterized by kinetic and phase transitions. In particular, in the reservoir rock, in coal, micro- and macrocrack systems are formed and developed. The shape of dissipative structures is described using fractal theory. The duration of self-organization of dissipative structures and the transition of the system to a new equilibrium state depends on the type of dissipative structures, the properties of the environment in which they are formed, and the speed of physicochemical processes. The article considers the behavior of the system “well – rock formation” as an open thermodynamic system. The internal energy of the formation is compared with the energy of external explosive action from the well. Specific examples show that the behavior of such a system is subject to the laws of synergetics and as a result of weak action on the formation from the well there are significant nonlinear effects of productivity growth due to the internal energy of the formation. This energy is generated by reservoir and rock pressures.

Objectives. The aim of the study is to increase the physico-thermal and operational characteristics of heat-resistant ceramsite concrete with an activated binder by pre-heating the mixture.Method. To conduct the study, a technique was developed by the Research Institute of Concrete and Reinforced Concrete named after A.A. Gvozdev.Results. An analysis of the study results of the effect of preliminary electric heating on the physico-thermal characteristics of heat-resistant ceramsite concrete on the basis of a composite binder showed that, in comparison with drying at a temperature of 105º, the operational properties of heat-resistant ceramsite concrete are enhanced by uniform heating of the samples along the concrete body. This isdue to the pore pressure in the concrete structure being reduced by removing physically bound water. Ceramsite is used as large filler while ceramsite sand is used as small filler; activated composite combination of local mineral raw materials consisting of Portland cement and calcined argillic clay is used as a binder. In the concrete body, due to the removal of physically bound water caused by the decrease in pore pressure, the formation of cracks in the interporal partitions decreases, preventing the explosive destruction of heat-resistant ceramsite concrete and improves its physico-mechanical, thermal and operational characteristics. Activated composite binder based on the combination of Portland cement and fine ground argillite clay reduces shrinkage deformations and increases the concrete strength as well as its heat resistance. Concretes with activated composite binder are less susceptible to volume change during the heating process,contributing to greater preservation of concrete strength and structure due to lower stress levels caused by the temperature deformations.Conclusion. The composition of the developed heat-resistant ceramsite concrete allows its use for monolithic lining of the walls of a tunnel kiln for burning ceramic bricks, as well as various concreting furnaces for the construction industry. The conducted research demonstrates the possibility and expediency of using electric heating for the hardening of heat-resistant ceramsite concrete with a composite binder. The use of electric heating increases the strength of heat-resistant ceramsite concrete both before and after heating to high temperatures. Optimised modes of electric heating of heat-resistant ceramsite concrete with a composite binder are established.

Due to the industrial accidents (the effects of explosion of improvised explosive devices or gas) or other unexpected events, heavily damaged buildings represent threat to environment. Generally, their damage is so serious that their reconstruction is not considered and the only solution is a demolition. Advantageously emergency shaped explosive charges can be used in these risk situations of buildings that are beyond repair. With such shaped charges is possible to execute a fast and effective implosion of an unstable building without the posing any threathening effects on surrounding, mainly in urban areas. This papers is focused on the design and development of mentioned shaped explosive charges, their testing in the field test and practical applications.

The method of outdoor installation of explosive charges is usually used in the destruction of rocks in conditions in which the method of drilling and blasting using borehole or borehole charges is difficult to apply due to objective conditions. The productivity of rock destruction by the outdoor installation of a concentrated charge is very low. This is due to the fact that such an explosion is characterized by a large loss of energy in the environment. The destruction of rocks by an explosion using shaped charges (CW) to destroy the rock is one solution to increase the useful energy of the destruction of the rock compared to charges placed outside. To achieve the optimal effect of destruction of the rock by cumulative charges, it is necessary to, so that for each type of rock, a specific type of shaped charges can be determined with the appropriate performance and efficiency of the use of explosives. The stronger the rock, the more efficient the short-circuit should be, and vice versa. Thus, for effective rock crushing, it is necessary to develop and produce a number of different types of shaped charges. The use of shaped explosive charges allows you to increase the utilization rate of the useful energy of the explosion and increase the destruction zone of the rock. At a fixed mass of the explosive, the destructive effect of the explosive charge placed on the surface of the rock, it depends on the shape of the charge and the geometric parameters of the charge. Shaped charges with an eccentric hemispherical shape have a coefficient of use of the useful energy of the explosion for the destruction of rock, more than 2.4 times compared to conventional concentrated charges of the same mass.

The design analysis techniques, used to determine vulnerability to attack or lethality of an explosive detonation, have been tested against a large database of experimental and test results. Building explosive testing chambers presents a whole new set of challenges, since the purpose of such tests is not the survival or destruction of the vessel, but gaining a better understanding of the explosion's dynamics. Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have chosen to combine aboveground testing using mock materials, advanced X-ray and proton radiography, and advanced computing capabilities for complex simulations. These vessel systems, when used with diagnostics such as flash or proton radiography, provide important data that help our weapon's designers validate design codes and support the certification of the weapon systems. The Atomic Weapons Establishment in the United Kingdom has similar activity under way. Testing has shown that within a millisecond, the stresses within the pressure vessel shift from a sharp, uniform impulse to a 1 kHz vibration. The amount of stress, or excitation, that the impulse places on the structure can be figured as the integral of the load over time of duration.

Purpose – To improve the efficiency and economy of electro-mechanical product's recycle process, this paper aims to propose a disassembly sequence planning (DSP) method to reduce additional efforts of removing extra parts in selectable disassembly. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology has three parts, which includes a disassembly hybrid graphic model to describe the product disassembly information, an object inverse-directed method to optimize the disassembly design and a model reconstruction method to achieve a better DSP. Findings – According to the disassembly cost criteria and the parameters of disassembly tools, the disassembly efficiency increases and the disassembly cost decreases due to the use of partial destructive mode compared with non-destructive mode. The proposed partial destructive DSP is more efficient and economical. Research limitations/implications – Partial destructive disassembly mode cannot be used for the flammable or explosive component in the procedure of the DSP optimization algorithm. Practical implications – DSP of an electric corkscrew is analyzed to investigate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method. Originality/value – This paper proposes a partial destructive disassembly based DSP method for product disassembly, which provides a new approach for the disposal of end-of-life products.

This paper describes the process of shooting a mobile armored combat vehicle with directed fragmentation-beam shells as a discrete-continuous random process. Based on this approach, a stochastic model has been proposed in the form of a system of Kolmogorov-Chapman differential equations. A universal model of the process of defeating a moving armored target with directed fragmentation-beam shells has been built, which would provide preconditions for experimental studies into the effectiveness of various variants of the components of the artillery system for three-shot firing. The execution of an artillery task is considered as a set of certain procedures characterized by the average value of its duration. They are dependent on the firing phases involving a prospective automatic gun and the explosive destruction of fragmentation-beam shells while the explosive destruction of each shell case is characterized by the self-propagation of the reaction of explosive transformations based on tabular data on the target. An indicator of the functionality of various design options for fragmentation-beam shells is the probability of causing damage by «useful fragments» in the vulnerable compartments of a combat armored vehicle. Devising universal models for the process of shooting a moving armored vehicle forms preconditions for further full-time experiments in accordance with the design solutions defined as a result of modeling. It is possible to use the developed discrete-continuous stochastic model in other modeling tasks to determine the optimal value of defeat. As regards the practical application of discrete-continuous stochastic models, one can argue about the possibility of reducing the cost of performing design tasks related to weapons by 25 % and decreasing the likelihood of making mistakes at the stage of system engineering design

To defeat surface targets "kamikaze" type UAVs with computer-integrated warheads are used. After preliminary target designation or finding it independently, “kamikaze” type UAV can destroy it, diving on the target as guided ammunition. Defeat characteristics of built-in warhead mainly depend on warhead itself and its fuse. The results of the combat mission of a UAV type "kamikaze" to hit typical targets are directly affected by the characteristics of the integrated warhead. The characteristics of destructive effect of the integrated warhead mainly depend on its type and explosive device. To simplify fuse„s characteristics proving process there is sense to divide them on groups, depending on method of their obtainment. To evaluate common parameters, concerning raw material use, components, proving of technical and economic requirements, correspondence to standardization and unification requirements, ergonomic and esthetic requirements is better to use existing standards and procedures for warhead and fuse evaluation. Laboratory tests prove mainly climatic and mechanical factors resistance. Proving of warhead and fuse effectiveness should be executed on fire range on final stage of "kamikaze" UAV test. Reliable evaluation results and characteristics are possible after investigation with special laboratory and fire range infrastructure. At present, the problematic issues of research of integrated warheads explosive devices are the determination of devices expiration service terms and their effectiveness when using UAVs of the "kamikaze" type under utmost permissible operation conditions etc. “Kamikaze” UAV warhead fuse directly influences on target damage level and should be developed and tested under exacting requirements. Therefore, reliable fuse characteristics, reached during investigation (including fire range test) define whole “kamikaze” UAV effectiveness of operational use.

The authors developed an environment-friendly demolition mechanical system for a large reinforced concrete structure for an actual site. The steam pressure cracking agent (SPC, non-explosive) is a method that can safely and quickly separate concrete because it produces lesser vibration and sound than the blasting method, which uses explosives. The authors showed that the direction of cracking can be controlled by an induction hole. The principle of control is that the elastic wave of the compression stress generated from the SPC reaction changes to a tensile elastic wave at the induction hole, which initiates a crack. Furthermore, in the SPC method, a large amount of concrete powder generated by the explosion method was not produced, and there was no risk of secondary contamination by fine concrete powder. The area over which the crack propagated depends on the energy generated from the SPC. The relationship between the two is linear. For reinforced concrete, the energy of the SPC is used for both the destructive energy of the concrete and the energy of the cutting of the reinforcing steel bar, which quickly breaks with low energy. By applying an SPC to dismantle large reinforced concrete structures, controlled cracking can be achieved safely and quickly without any environmental pollution. A fracturing method using a SPC is an effective method for the decommissioning of nuclear power plants and the dismantling of concrete structures. In this report, we report a remote drilling system that can be used to remotely install loading holes and guiding holes for the SPC and perform effective controlled fracturing.

AbstractThis paper describes the recovery, on-site nondestructive mechanical breaching, and chemical neutralization of munitions recovered from an underwater environment. The munitions were recovered during salvaging of the scuttled confederate states ship (CSS) Georgia, as part of the Savannah Harbor Expansion Project (SHEP). The CSS Georgia was scuttled on December 20, 1864. The CSS Georgia wreck site is on the Georgia and South Carolina border and covers an approximate area of 350 × 200 feet at a depth of about 36 feet. Because the CSS Georgia shipwreck site would obstruct the SHEP, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) entered into agreements to salvage some artifacts, including the munitions, for conservation. Due to the historical significance of the artifacts and the munitions among the CSS Georgia wreckage, the USACE required that the munitions be neutralized in the safest and least destructive manner possible. The munitions on board the scuttled CSS Georgia consisted of two types of civil war era projectiles, often described as cannon balls. A total of 185 munitions were removed from the CSS Georgia site in 2015. The majority of the recovered projectiles (170) were mechanically breached, and energetics were safely neutralized using MuniRem, an innovative chemical reduction reagent for explosives. After the black powder was completely flushed and neutralized, fuzes were unscrewed, if it could be done safely; otherwise, the explosive ordnance disposal technicians drilled into the fuzes at an angle. The contents of the fuze were neutralized in a solution of MuniRem before reattachment to the projectile. The neutralized black powder solids and wastewater were disposed as nonhazardous wastes. This project constitutes the largest on-site chemical neutralization of recovered confederate and underwater disposed military munitions from the U.S. civil war era.

Tantalum refractory liners were explosively clad into cylindrical pressure vessels, some of which had been previously autofrettaged. Using explosive cladding, the refractory liner formed a metallurgical bond with the steel of the pressure vessel at a cost of induced strain. Two techniques were employed to determine the residual stress state of the clad steel cylinders: neutron diffraction and mechanical slitting. Neutron diffraction is typically nondestructive; however, due to attenuation along the beam path, the cylinders had to be sectioned into rings that were nominally 25 mm thick. Slitting is a destructive method, requiring the sectioning of the cylindrical samples. Both techniques provided triaxial stress data and useful information on the effects of explosive cladding. The stress profiles in the hoop and radial directions were similar for an autofrettaged, nonclad vessel and a clad, nonautofrettaged vessel. The stress profiles in the axial direction appeared to be different. Further, the data suggested that residual stresses from the autofrettage and explosive cladding processes were not additive, in part due to evidence of reverse yielding. The residual stress data are presented, compared and discussed.

Abstract Experimental results of observing ethanol microjets expiring into a highly rarefied medium (vacuum) through a nozzle are presented. The study of the process was carried out both at the horizontal and vertical liquid stream from the source compared to the direction of gravity The residual background gas pressure in the vacuum chamber was maintained at a level much lower than the saturated vapor pressure of the working fluid at a given outlet temperature. The possibility of modeling complex processes of microfluids expiring into a medium with a given rarefied atmosphere on a compact vacuum gas-dynamic stand is shown. It is established that the long-term flow from a thin capillary or a small-diameter hole into a vacuum or a highly rarefied gas medium differs significantly from the well-studied flow modes into a dense gas medium, as well as from the pulsed flow modes into a vacuum. The paper describes the main features of the flow and the conditions for the occurrence of instability. It is shown that the long-term flow of a liquid microjet in a vacuum has a high degree of surface instability, with a large number of sudden changes in the direction, structure, and observed density. An explanation of the reasons for the destruction of the microjet (due to the combination of capillary instability and intense evaporation of superheated liquid from the surface of the jet) is proposed. The formation of surface gas caverns causing explosive destruction of the microjet with the release of vapor–liquid droplets is established.

Keep in safe operability conditions, using the calculations to apply mechanical processes and in order to detect any anomaly that allow timely take preventive actions and repair the elements that are part of the containers in poor condition or outside the rules that govern them. In the rings using analytical methods such as the verification of thicknesses by calculating them by the methods specified in API 653 Inspection, Repair, Alteration and Reconstruction of Tanks American Petroleum Institute, finding if they are outside the appropriate regulations by comparison with what is measured in real form on the hull ring plate, whereby the method is non-destructive inspection, API 650 “Welded Steel Tanks for Petroleum Storage American Petroleum Institute (American Petroleum Institute). To carry out the relevant repairs using welding and cutting processes, assembly and maneuvers application of coatings and materials necessary according to the repair to maintain and ensure the integrity of the container improving the reliability of operation, contributing to the safety of the tanks, accessories and attached systems , as containers of highly explosive and incendiary hydrocarbon derived products.

PurposeIn the present article, the authors have conducted a review on some of the recent developments given in the literature pertaining to the passive protection of concrete structures using intumescent coatings. Here, the main thrust is placed on the spalling phenomenon of concrete elements when exposed to elevated temperatures and fires.Design/methodology/approachIn this context, it has been long established that prolonged thermal insult on concrete members will lead to egress of water, both physically bound as well as those present as water of hydration within the concrete matrix, in the form of steam through microchannels and associated pathways of least resistance, often resulting in the flaking of the surface of the structure. The latter process can ultimately lead to the exposure of the ferrous-based reenforcement elements, for instance, to higher temperatures, thus inducing melting. This, in turn, can result in substantial loss of strength and load-bearing capacity of the structural element that is already undergoing disintegration of its base matrix owing to heat/fire. Even though spalling of concrete structures has long been recognized as a serious problem that can often lead to catastrophic failure of infrastructures, such as buildings, bridges and tunnels, the utility of intumescent coating as a mitigation strategy is relatively new and has not been explored to its fullest possible extent. Therefore, in the latter parts of the review, the authors have endeavored to discuss the different types of intumescent coatings, their modes of actions and, in particular, their wider applicability in terms of protecting concrete elements from detrimental effects of severe or explosive spalling.FindingsGiven that spalling of concrete components is still a very serious issue that can result in loss of lives and destruction of critical infrastructures, there is an urgent need to formulate better mitigating strategies, through novel means and methods. The use of the intumescent coating in this context appears to be a promising way forward but is one that seems to be little explored so far. Therefore, a more systematic investigation is highly warranted in this area, especially, as the authors envisage a greater activity in the building and commissioning of more infrastructures worldwide incommensurate with augmented economic activities during the post-COVID recovery period.Originality/valueThe authors have conducted a review on some of the recent developments given in the literature pertaining to the passive protection of concrete structures using intumescent coatings. The authors have also included the results from some recent tests carried out at the facilities using a newly commissioned state-of-the-art furnace.

1. Guy Debord in the Land of the Long WeekendIt’s the weekend – leisure time. It’s the interlude when, Guy Debord contends, the proletarian is briefly free of the “total contempt so clearly built into every aspect of the organization and management of production” in commodity capitalism; when workers are temporarily “treated like grown-ups, with a great show of solicitude and politeness, in their new role as consumers.” But this patronising show turns out to be another form of subjection to the diktats of “political economy”: “the totality of human existence falls under the regime of the ‘perfected denial of man’.” (30). As Debord suggests, even the creation of leisure time and space is predicated upon a form of contempt: the “perfected denial” of who we, as living people, really are in the eyes of those who presume the power to legislate our working practices and private identities.This Saturday The Weekend Australian runs an opinion piece by Christopher Pearson, defending ABC Radio National’s Stephen Crittenden, whose program The Religion Report has been axed. “Some of Crittenden’s finest half-hours have been devoted to Islam in Australia in the wake of September 11,” Pearson writes. “Again and again he’s confronted a left-of-centre audience that expected multi-cultural pieties with disturbing assertions.” Along the way in this admirable Crusade, Pearson notes that Crittenden has exposed “the Left’s recent tendency to ally itself with Islam.” According to Pearson, Crittenden has also thankfully given oxygen to claims by James Cook University’s Mervyn Bendle, the “fairly conservative academic whose work sometimes appears in [these] pages,” that “the discipline of critical terrorism studies has been captured by neo-Marxists of a postmodern bent” (30). Both of these points are well beyond misunderstanding or untested proposition. If Pearson means them sincerely he should be embarrassed and sacked. But of course he does not and will not be. These are deliberate lies, the confabulations of an eminent right-wing culture warrior whose job is to vilify minorities and intellectuals (Bendle escapes censure as an academic because he occasionally scribbles for the Murdoch press). It should be observed, too, how the patent absurdity of Pearson’s remarks reveals the extent to which he holds the intelligence of his readers in contempt. And he is not original in peddling these toxic wares.In their insightful—often hilarious—study of Australian opinion writers, The War on Democracy, Niall Lucy and Steve Mickler identify the left-academic-Islam nexus as the brain-child of former Treasurer-cum-memoirist Peter Costello. The germinal moment was “a speech to the Australian American Leadership Dialogue forum at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2005” concerning anti-Americanism in Australian schools. Lucy and Mickler argue that “it was only a matter of time” before a conservative politician or journalist took the plunge to link the left and terrorism, and Costello plunged brilliantly. He drew a mental map of the Great Chain of Being: left-wing academics taught teacher trainees to be anti-American; teacher trainees became teachers and taught kids to be anti-American; anti-Americanism morphs into anti-Westernism; anti-Westernism veers into terrorism (38). This is contempt for the reasoning capacity of the Australian people and, further still, contempt for any observable reality. Not for nothing was Costello generally perceived by the public as a politician whose very physiognomy radiated smugness and contempt.Recycling Costello, Christopher Pearson’s article subtly interpellates the reader as an ordinary, common-sense individual who instinctively feels what’s right and has no need to think too much—thinking too much is the prerogative of “neo-Marxists” and postmodernists. Ultimately, Pearson’s article is about channelling outrage: directing the down-to-earth passions of the Australian people against stock-in-trade culture-war hate figures. And in Pearson’s paranoid world, words like “neo-Marxist” and “postmodern” are devoid of historical or intellectual meaning. They are, as Lucy and Mickler’s War on Democracy repeatedly demonstrate, mere ciphers packed with the baggage of contempt for independent critical thought itself.Contempt is everywhere this weekend. The Weekend Australian’s colour magazine runs a feature story on Malcolm Turnbull: one of those familiar profiles designed to reveal the everyday human touch of the political classes. In this puff-piece, Jennifer Hewett finds Turnbull has “a restless passion for participating in public life” (20); that beneath “the aggressive political rhetoric […] behind the journalist turned lawyer turned banker turned politician turned would-be prime minister is a man who really enjoys that human interaction, however brief, with the many, many ordinary people he encounters” (16). Given all this energetic turning, it’s a wonder that Turnbull has time for human interactions at all. The distinction here of Turnbull and “many, many ordinary people” – the anonymous masses – surely runs counter to Hewett’s brief to personalise and quotidianise him. Likewise, those two key words, “however brief”, have an unfortunate, unintended effect. Presumably meant to conjure a picture of Turnbull’s hectic schedules and serial turnings, the words also convey the image of a patrician who begrudgingly knows one of the costs of a political career is that common flesh must be pressed—but as gingerly as possible.Hewett proceeds to disclose that Turnbull is “no conservative cultural warrior”, “onfounds stereotypes” and “hates labels” (like any baby-boomer rebel) and “has always read widely on political philosophy—his favourite is Edmund Burke”. He sees the “role of the state above all as enabling people to do their best” but knows that “the main game is the economy” and is “content to play mainstream gesture politics” (19). I am genuinely puzzled by this and imagine that my intelligence is being held in contempt once again. That the man of substance is given to populist gesturing is problematic enough; but that the Burke fan believes the state is about personal empowerment is just too much. Maybe Turnbull is a fan of Burke’s complex writings on the sublime and the beautiful—but no, Hewett avers, Turnbull is engaged by Burke’s “political philosophy”. So what is it in Burke that Turnbull finds to favour?Turnbull’s invocation of Edmund Burke is empty, gestural and contradictory. The comfortable notion that the state helps people to realise their potential is contravened by Burke’s view that the state functions so “the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection… by a power out of themselves” (151). Nor does Burke believe that anyone of humble origins could or should rise to the top of the social heap: “The occupation of an hair-dresser, or of a working tallow-chandler, cannot be a matter of honour to any person… the state suffers oppression, if such as they, either individually or collectively, are permitted to rule” (138).If Turnbull’s main game as a would-be statesman is the economy, Burke profoundly disagrees: “the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, callico or tobacco, or some other such low concern… It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection”—a sublime entity, not an economic manager (194). Burke understands, long before Antonio Gramsci or Louis Althusser, that individuals or social fractions must be made admirably “obedient” to the state “by consent or force” (195). Burke has a verdict on mainstream gesture politics too: “When men of rank sacrifice all ideas of dignity to an ambition without a distinct object, and work with low instruments and for low ends, the whole composition [of the state] becomes low and base” (136).Is Malcolm Turnbull so contemptuous of the public that he assumes nobody will notice the gross discrepancies between his own ideals and what Burke stands for? His invocation of Burke is, indeed, “mainstream gesture politics”: on one level, “Burke” signifies nothing more than Turnbull’s performance of himself as a deep thinker. In this process, the real Edmund Burke is historically erased; reduced to the status of stage-prop in the theatrical production of Turnbull’s mass-mediated identity. “Edmund Burke” is re-invented as a term in an aesthetic repertoire.This transmutation of knowledge and history into mere cipher is the staple trick of culture-war discourse. Jennifer Hewett casts Turnbull as “no conservative culture warrior”, but he certainly shows a facility with culture-war rhetoric. And as much as Turnbull “confounds stereotypes” his verbal gesture to Edmund Burke entrenches a stereotype: at another level, the incantation “Edmund Burke” is implicitly meant to connect Turnbull with conservative tradition—in the exact way that John Howard regularly self-nominated as a “Burkean conservative”.This appeal to tradition effectively places “the people” in a power relation. Tradition has a sublimity that is bigger than us; it precedes us and will outlast us. Consequently, for a politician to claim that tradition has fashioned him, that he is welded to it or perhaps even owns it as part of his heritage, is to glibly imply an authority greater than that of “the many, many ordinary people”—Burke’s hair-dressers and tallow-chandlers—whose company he so briefly enjoys.In The Ideology of the Aesthetic, Terry Eagleton assesses one of Burke’s important legacies, placing him beside another eighteenth-century thinker so loved by the right—Adam Smith. Ideology of the Aesthetic is premised on the view that “Aesthetics is born as a discourse of the body”; that the aesthetic gives form to the “primitive materialism” of human passions and organises “the whole of our sensate life together… a society’s somatic, sensational life” (13). Reading Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, Eagleton discerns that society appears as “an immense machine, whose regular and harmonious movements produce a thousand agreeable effects”, like “any production of human art”. In Smith’s work, the “whole of social life is aestheticized” and people inhabit “a social order so spontaneously cohesive that its members no longer need to think about it.” In Burke, Eagleton discovers that the aesthetics of “manners” can be understood in terms of Gramscian hegemony: “in the aesthetics of social conduct, or ‘culture’ as it would later be called, the law is always with us, as the very unconscious structure of our life”, and as a result conformity to a dominant ideological order is deeply felt as pleasurable and beautiful (37, 42). When this conservative aesthetic enters the realm of politics, Eagleton contends, the “right turn, from Burke” onwards follows a dark trajectory: “forget about theoretical analysis… view society as a self-grounding organism, all of whose parts miraculously interpenetrate without conflict and require no rational justification. Think with the blood and the body. Remember that tradition is always wiser and richer than one’s own poor, pitiable ego. It is this line of descent, in one of its tributaries, which will lead to the Third Reich” (368–9).2. Jean Baudrillard, the Nazis and Public MemoryIn 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, the Third Reich’s Condor Legion of the Luftwaffe was on loan to Franco’s forces. On 26 April that year, the Condor Legion bombed the market-town of Guernica: the first deliberate attempt to obliterate an entire town from the air and the first experiment in what became known as “terror bombing”—the targeting of civilians. A legacy of this violence was Pablo Picasso’s monumental canvas Guernica – the best-known anti-war painting in art history.When US Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations on 5 February 2003 to make the case for war on Iraq, he stopped to face the press in the UN building’s lobby. The doorstop was globally televised, packaged as a moment of incredible significance: history in the making. It was also theatre: a moment in which history was staged as “event” and the real traces of history were carefully erased. Millions of viewers world-wide were undoubtedly unaware that the blue backdrop before which Powell stood was specifically designed to cover the full-scale tapestry copy of Picasso’s Guernica. This one-act, agitprop drama was a splendid example of politics as aesthetic action: a “performance” of history in the making which required the loss of actual historical memory enshrined in Guernica. Powell’s performance took its cues from the culture wars, which require the ceaseless erasure of history and public memory—on this occasion enacted on a breathtaking global, rather than national, scale.Inside the UN chamber, Powell’s performance was equally staged-crafted. As he brandished vials of ersatz anthrax, the power-point behind him (the theatrical set) showed artists’ impressions of imaginary mobile chemical weapons laboratories. Powell was playing lead role in a kind of populist, hyperreal production. It was Jean Baudrillard’s postmodernism, no less, as the media space in which Powell acted out the drama was not a secondary representation of reality but a reality of its own; the overheads of mobile weapons labs were simulacra, “models of a real without origins or reality”, pictures referring to nothing but themselves (2). In short, Powell’s performance was anchored in a “semiurgic” aesthetic; and it was a dreadful real-life enactment of Walter Benjamin’s maxim that “All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war” (241).For Benjamin, “Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate.” Fascism gave “these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves.” In turn, this required “the introduction of aesthetics into politics”, the objective of which was “the production of ritual values” (241). Under Adolf Hitler’s Reich, people were able to express themselves but only via the rehearsal of officially produced ritual values: by their participation in the disquisition on what Germany meant and what it meant to be German, by the aesthetic regulation of their passions. As Frederic Spotts’ fine study Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics reveals, this passionate disquisition permeated public and private life, through the artfully constructed total field of national narratives, myths, symbols and iconographies. And the ritualistic reiteration of national values in Nazi Germany hinged on two things: contempt and memory loss.By April 1945, as Berlin fell, Hitler’s contempt for the German people was at its apogee. Hitler ordered a scorched earth operation: the destruction of everything from factories to farms to food stores. The Russians would get nothing, the German people would perish. Albert Speer refused to implement the plan and remembered that “Until then… Germany and Hitler had been synonymous in my mind. But now I saw two entities opposed… A passionate love of one’s country… a leader who seemed to hate his people” (Sereny 472). But Hitler’s contempt for the German people was betrayed in the blusterous pages of Mein Kampf years earlier: “The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous” (165). On the back of this belief, Hitler launched what today would be called a culture war, with its Jewish folk devils, loathsome Marxist intellectuals, incitement of popular passions, invented traditions, historical erasures and constant iteration of values.When Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer fled Fascism, landing in the United States, their view of capitalist democracy borrowed from Benjamin and anticipated both Baudrillard and Guy Debord. In their well-know essay on “The Culture Industry”, in Dialectic of Enlightenment, they applied Benjamin’s insight on mass self-expression and the maintenance of property relations and ritual values to American popular culture: “All are free to dance and enjoy themselves”, but the freedom to choose how to do so “proves to be the freedom to choose what is always the same”, manufactured by monopoly capital (161–162). Anticipating Baudrillard, they found a society in which “only the copy appears: in the movie theatre, the photograph; on the radio, the recording” (143). And anticipating Debord’s “perfected denial of man” they found a society where work and leisure were structured by the repetition-compulsion principles of capitalism: where people became consumers who appeared “s statistics on research organization charts” (123). “Culture” came to do people’s thinking for them: “Pleasure always means not to think about anything, to forget suffering even where it is shown” (144).In this mass-mediated environment, a culture of repetitions, simulacra, billboards and flickering screens, Adorno and Horkheimer concluded that language lost its historical anchorages: “Innumerable people use words and expressions which they have either ceased to understand or employ only because they trigger off conditioned reflexes” in precisely the same way that the illusory “free” expression of passions in Germany operated, where words were “debased by the Fascist pseudo-folk community” (166).I know that the turf of the culture wars, the US and Australia, are not Fascist states; and I know that “the first one to mention the Nazis loses the argument”. I know, too, that there are obvious shortcomings in Adorno and Horkheimer’s reactions to popular culture and these have been widely criticised. However, I would suggest that there is a great deal of value still in Frankfurt School analyses of what we might call the “authoritarian popular” which can be applied to the conservative prosecution of populist culture wars today. Think, for example, how the concept of a “pseudo folk community” might well describe the earthy, common-sense public constructed and interpellated by right-wing culture warriors: America’s Joe Six-Pack, John Howard’s battlers or Kevin Rudd’s working families.In fact, Adorno and Horkheimer’s observations on language go to the heart of a contemporary culture war strategy. Words lose their history, becoming ciphers and “triggers” in a politicised lexicon. Later, Roland Barthes would write that this is a form of myth-making: “myth is constituted by the loss of the historical quality of things.” Barthes reasoned further that “Bourgeois ideology continuously transforms the products of history into essential types”, generating a “cultural logic” and an ideological re-ordering of the world (142). Types such as “neo-Marxist”, “postmodernist” and “Burkean conservative”.Surely, Benjamin’s assessment that Fascism gives “the people” the occasion to express itself, but only through “values”, describes the right’s pernicious incitement of the mythic “dispossessed mainstream” to reclaim its voice: to shout down the noisy minorities—the gays, greenies, blacks, feminists, multiculturalists and neo-Marxist postmodernists—who’ve apparently been running the show. Even more telling, Benjamin’s insight that the incitement to self-expression is connected to the maintenance of property relations, to economic power, is crucial to understanding the contemptuous conduct of culture wars.3. Jesus Dunked in Urine from Kansas to CronullaAmerican commentator Thomas Frank bases his study What’s the Matter with Kansas? on this very point. Subtitled How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, Frank’s book is a striking analysis of the indexation of Chicago School free-market reform and the mobilisation of “explosive social issues—summoning public outrage over everything from busing to un-Christian art—which it then marries to pro-business policies”; but it is the “economic achievements” of free-market capitalism, “not the forgettable skirmishes of the never-ending culture wars” that are conservatism’s “greatest monuments.” Nevertheless, the culture wars are necessary as Chicago School economic thinking consigns American communities to the rust belt. The promise of “free-market miracles” fails ordinary Americans, Frank reasons, leaving them in “backlash” mode: angry, bewildered and broke. And in this context, culture wars are a convenient form of anger management: “Because some artist decides to shock the hicks by dunking Jesus in urine, the entire planet must remake itself along the lines preferred” by nationalist, populist moralism and free-market fundamentalism (5).When John Howard received the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute’s Irving Kristol Award, on 6 March 2008, he gave a speech in Washington titled “Sharing Our Common Values”. The nub of the speech was Howard’s revelation that he understood the index of neo-liberal economics and culture wars precisely as Thomas Frank does. Howard told the AEI audience that under his prime ministership Australia had “pursued reform and further modernisation of our economy” and that this inevitably meant “dislocation for communities”. This “reform-dislocation” package needed the palliative of a culture war, with his government preaching the “consistency and reassurance” of “our nation’s traditional values… pride in her history”; his government “became assertive about the intrinsic worth of our national identity. In the process we ended the seemingly endless seminar about that identity which had been in progress for some years.” Howard’s boast that his government ended the “seminar” on national identity insinuates an important point. “Seminar” is a culture-war cipher for intellection, just as “pride” is code for passion; so Howard’s self-proclaimed achievement, in Terry Eagleton’s terms, was to valorise “the blood and the body” over “theoretical analysis”. This speaks stratospheric contempt: ordinary people have their identity fashioned for them; they need not think about it, only feel it deeply and passionately according to “ritual values”. Undoubtedly this paved the way to Cronulla.The rubric of Howard’s speech—“Sharing Our Common Values”—was both a homage to international neo-conservatism and a reminder that culture wars are a trans-national phenomenon. In his address, Howard said that in all his “years in politics” he had not heard a “more evocative political slogan” than Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America”—the rhetorical catch-cry for moral re-awakening that launched the culture wars. According to Lawrence Grossberg, America’s culture wars were predicated on the perception that the nation was afflicted by “a crisis of our lack of passion, of not caring enough about the values we hold… a crisis of nihilism which, while not restructuring our ideological beliefs, has undermined our ability to organise effective action on their behalf”; and this “New Right” alarmism “operates in the conjuncture of economics and popular culture” and “a popular struggle by which culture can lead politics” in the passionate pursuit of ritual values (31–2). When popular culture leads politics in this way we are in the zone of the image, myth and Adorno and Horkheimer’s “trigger words” that have lost their history. In this context, McKenzie Wark observes that “radical writers influenced by Marx will see the idea of culture as compensation for a fragmented and alienated life as a con. Guy Debord, perhaps the last of the great revolutionary thinkers of Europe, will call it “the spectacle”’ (20). Adorno and Horkheimer might well have called it “the authoritarian popular”. As Jonathan Charteris-Black’s work capably demonstrates, all politicians have their own idiolect: their personally coded language, preferred narratives and myths; their own vision of who “the people” might or should be that is conjured in their words. But the language of the culture wars is different. It is not a personal idiolect. It is a shared vocabulary, a networked vernacular, a pervasive trans-national aesthetic that pivots on the fact that words like “neo-Marxist”, “postmodern” and “Edmund Burke” have no historical or intellectual context or content: they exist as the ciphers of “values”. And the fact that culture warriors continually mouth them is a supreme act of contempt: it robs the public of its memory. And that’s why, as Lucy and Mickler’s War on Democracy so wittily argues, if there are any postmodernists left they’ll be on the right.Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer and, later, Debord and Grossberg understood how the political activation of the popular constitutes a hegemonic project. The result is nothing short of persuading “the people” to collaborate in its own oppression. The activation of the popular is perfectly geared to an age where the main stage of political life is the mainstream media; an age in which, Charteris-Black notes, political classes assume the general antipathy of publics to social change and act on the principle that the most effective political messages are sold to “the people” by an appeal “to familiar experiences”—market populism (10). In her substantial study The Persuaders, Sally Young cites an Australian Labor Party survey, conducted by pollster Rod Cameron in the late 1970s, in which the party’s message machine was finely tuned to this populist position. The survey also dripped with contempt for ordinary people: their “Interest in political philosophy… is very low… They are essentially the products (and supporters) of mass market commercialism”. Young observes that this view of “the people” was the foundation of a new order of political advertising and the conduct of politics on the mass-media stage. Cameron’s profile of “ordinary people” went on to assert that they are fatally attracted to “a moderate leader who is strong… but can understand and represent their value system” (47): a prescription for populist discourse which begs the question of whether the values a politician or party represent via the media are ever really those of “the people”. More likely, people are hegemonised into a value system which they take to be theirs. Writing of the media side of the equation, David Salter raises the point that when media “moguls thunder about ‘the public interest’ what they really mean is ‘what we think the public is interested in”, which is quite another matter… Why this self-serving deception is still so sheepishly accepted by the same public it is so often used to violate remains a mystery” (40).Sally Young’s Persuaders retails a story that she sees as “symbolic” of the new world of mass-mediated political life. The story concerns Mark Latham and his “revolutionary” journeys to regional Australia to meet the people. “When a political leader who holds a public meeting is dubbed a ‘revolutionary’”, Young rightly observes, “something has gone seriously wrong”. She notes how Latham’s “use of old-fashioned ‘meet-and-greet’campaigning methods was seen as a breath of fresh air because it was unlike the type of packaged, stage-managed and media-dependent politics that have become the norm in Australia.” Except that it wasn’t. “A media pack of thirty journalists trailed Latham in a bus”, meaning, that he was not meeting the people at all (6–7). He was traducing the people as participants in a media spectacle, as his “meet and greet” was designed to fill the image-banks of print and electronic media. Even meeting the people becomes a media pseudo-event in which the people impersonate the people for the camera’s benefit; a spectacle as artfully deceitful as Colin Powell’s UN performance on Iraq.If the success of this kind of “self-serving deception” is a mystery to David Salter, it would not be so to the Frankfurt School. For them, an understanding of the processes of mass-mediated politics sits somewhere near the core of their analysis of the culture industries in the “democratic” world. I think the Frankfurt school should be restored to a more important role in the project of cultural studies. Apart from an aversion to jazz and other supposedly “elitist” heresies, thinkers like Adorno, Benjamin, Horkheimer and their progeny Debord have a functional claim to provide the theory for us to expose the machinations of the politics of contempt and its aesthetic ruses.ReferencesAdorno, Theodor and Max Horkheimer. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." Dialectic of Enlightenment. London: Verso, 1979. 120–167.Barthes Roland. “Myth Today.” Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. St Albans: Paladin, 1972. 109–58.Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e), 1983.Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zorn. New York: Schocken Books, 1969. 217–251.Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Ed. Conor Cruise O’Brien. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.Charteris-Black, Jonathan. Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: Zone Books, 1994.Eagleton, Terry. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990.Frank, Thomas. What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004.Grossberg, Lawrence. “It’s a Sin: Politics, Post-Modernity and the Popular.” It’s a Sin: Essays on Postmodern Politics & Culture. Eds. Tony Fry, Ann Curthoys and Paul Patton. Sydney: Power Publications, 1988. 6–71.Hewett, Jennifer. “The Opportunist.” The Weekend Australian Magazine. 25–26 October 2008. 16–22.Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. Trans. Ralph Manheim. London: Pimlico, 1993.Howard, John. “Sharing Our Common Values.” Washington: Irving Kristol Lecture, American Enterprise Institute. 5 March 2008. ‹http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,233328945-5014047,00html›.Lucy, Niall and Steve Mickler. The War on Democracy: Conservative Opinion in the Australian Press. Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2006.Pearson, Christopher. “Pray for Sense to Prevail.” The Weekend Australian. 25–26 October 2008. 30.Salter, David. The Media We Deserve: Underachievement in the Fourth Estate. Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 2007. Sereny, Gitta. Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth. London: Picador, 1996.Spotts, Frederic. Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics. London: Pimlico, 2003.Wark, McKenzie. The Virtual Republic: Australia’s Culture Wars of the 1990s. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1997.Young, Sally. The Persuaders: Inside the Hidden Machine of Political Advertising. Melbourne: Pluto Press, 2004.