CSIR DETONICS, BALLISTICS AND EXPLOSIVES LABORATORY

By Tshepo Setlai

The CSIR’s Detonics, Ballistics and Explosives Laboratory is a uniquely equipped, multi-million-rand facility that is used in the development of protective technologies for people and infrastructure, and to support astute procurement of defence and security operational requirements. In addition, the facility provides services and technical consulting for industry and mining partners, and our research facilities are used to offer world-class explosives training for a variety of government and private groups.
The facility is situated near Pretoria in South Africa’s Gauteng province. Testing types range from small arms testing, small scale tests up to 200g and explosive events up to 50 kg nett explosive content. A number of protection and observation shelters ensure the safety of operators in compliance with health and safety regulations.

CSIR researchers make use of specialised equipment and techniques extensively to do experiments, measure the outcome of the experiment and correlate findings with the theoretical base in the research field. Many of these techniques were developed by the CSIR at DBEL and refined over many years.
DBEL Facility is the only national test facility for the validation of vehicle protection against landmines and IEDs. Through this facility, the CSIR has developed and contributed to both international and local protection standards.

To support acquisition decision-making, the DBEL facility is used to develop specifications – and check delivered goods against specifications. This avoids the intake of inferior, inefficient, dangerous, or defective products and prevents loss of lives and millions of invested moneys.
The facility is used by various teams within the CSIR’s defence research capability to inform the design, engineering and development of suitable and effective personnel, vehicle, and infrastructure safety solutions. The facilities major clientele includes South African commercial explosives manufactures like AECI Mining, Solar Mining and BME.
The DBEL facility as laboratory, we remain uniquely placed to offer detailed guidance to companies that are faced with the complexities of explosives testing and evaluations.