Staged Explosive to Mitigate Cook-Off Violence: Preliminary Work with 2,4-Dinitrophenyl Hydrazine

A potential method to mitigate cook-off violence of heavily confined explosives is to add a minor ingredient that reacts at temperatures below where cook off usually occurs, to burst the confinement and/or interfere with the thermal decomposition chemistry of the explosive so to slow subsequent reactions, This additive would not - impact the explosive's performance significantly, but only comes into play during relatively slow thermal heating. The material 2,4-dinitrophenyl hydrazine has shown promise to produce the required mitigation for Composition B explosive in a laboratory confinement that mimics very heavy confinement. The results of this - work are presented.