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Smokeless powder inside a containment vessel, like a cartridge case, creates more pressure as the bullet exits the cartridge case than the same case filled with black powder.
The difference was so great when smokeless came into use in the late 1800's that the barrels of the time were found to be inadequate to contain that increase in pressure. Better steels were needed to handle the pressures.
And as stated above black powder is considered an explosive and must be treated as such whereas smokeless powder is a propellant and not nearly as dangerous to handle.
If you make a pair of parallel lines of both black powder and smokeless powder and light them off then the difference in the burn is huge. The black powder burns fast and the flame travels the line quickly whereas the smokeless powder line will be hard to start and burn the line (if at all) slowly. Of course, in a contained volume the smokeless powder generates much higher pressures than the black powder.
LDBennett
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