Investigation of Meso-Erythritol as an inert shock surrogate for PETN shock experiments

Inert surrogates for high explosives provide low-risk options to study their basic material response to extreme conditions such as high pressure and high strain rates. Meso-Erythritol is under evaluation as a shock surrogate for Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate (PETN) due to their similar density, crystal structures, and melting points. However, no Hugoniot data for Meso-Erythritol currently exists. Preliminary gas gun experiments were performed to test a setup for determining the Hugoniot of Meso-Erythritol as a powder compact at 1.18 g/cc (82% theoretical maximum density). Photon doppler velocimetry was used to measure particle velocities. Experiments investigated impact velocities of up to 450 meters per second, and the testing conditions were used to inform hydrocode simulations. Initial results suggest that the resulting particle velocity in Meso-Erythritol is lower than PETN when compared to hydrocode simulations and that shock decay in Meso-Erythritol is faster than PETN.