A Simple and Rapid Evaluation of Explosive Performance - The Disc Acceleration Experiment

It is crucial in the development of a new explosive to obtain an evaluation of performance early in the process when the availability of material is limited. Evaluation requires dynamic measurements of detonation velocity, pressure, and expansion energy – typically in separate experiments that require large amounts of material, time, and expense. There is also a need for evaluation of the total available thermodynamic energy. The dynamic evaluations, in particular, have been a major hindrance to development of new explosives. The new experimental testing method to be described here requires small charges and obtains accurate measurement of all three of the detonation performance characteristics in a single test. The design, a Disc Acceleration eXperiment (DAX), provides an initial condition of steady detonation and a charge‐geometry amenable to 2D hydrodynamic simulations. The velocity history of a metal disk attached to the end of the explosive charge is measured with Photonic Doppler Velocimetry (PDV). This disc velocity data is analyzed to give both CJ pressure and expansion energy. The detonation velocity is obtained with probes along the charge length. The experiments and subsequent analyses are concentrated on LX‐16, a known PETN based explosive, for the purpose of establishing the accuracy of the method and to provide a standard for comparison with other explosives. We present details of the experimental design and also detonation velocity and PDV results from a number of experiments. The total available internal energy for the explosive was obtained from published detonation calorimetry measurements by Ornellas [1], and from thermodynamic equilibrium calculations. An equation‐of‐state (EOS) for LX‐16 was derived from hydrodynamic simulations of thin plate‐push velocity‐time data. We will show a successful comparison with a previously published Jones‐Wilkins‐Lee (JWL) EOS for PETN by Green and Lee [2–4].