A 50 / 60 steel tube deflagration - to - detonation transition (DDT) test was conducted for 58 types of smokeless powder manufactured by the NOF Corporation in order to determine appropriate criteria for predicting detonation. Of the products tested, 26 were deemed to detonate under the test conditions, and the mass distribution of fragments recovered from the tests of these propellants exhibited two distinct regions with slope 0.6 (small fragments) and 1.6 (large fragments). From an analysis of the detonation criterion used in Japan, by which detonation is defined to occur when less than half of the original mass of the tubing is recoverable in fragments larger than 200 g, the quickness and surface area - to - volume ratio were found to be reliable indicators of the possibility of detonation.