Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory October 17, 2018
In most high explosives, detonation is initiated through a process where pores get compressed by a shockwave. Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory found that in an explosive compound called HMX when pores are at the surface, they speed up the reaction, if a shockwave hits a number of surface pores at once, they bootstrap each other. While they showed that many small pores can work together to accelerate one another’s burning, they also were able to identify a threshold where pores become so small that the reaction is extinguished. This examination was conducted in a series of numerical simulations. According to the researchers if it is possible to engineer initiation properties into the microstructure of explosives, it would be a game changer for industry and for the safety of the nuclear stockpile… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
Supercomputer simulations of shock-induced explosive reactions suggest that the microstructure of heterogeneous solid explosive materials impact performance and safety. Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory