Computed and Experimental Hugoniots for Unreacted Porous High Explosives.

Abstract : A knowledge of the Hugoniot of unreacted explosives is required to interpret transitional phenomena in explosives and to determine the shock sensitivity of explosives. The usual method employed to obtain the Hugoniot of a material is to perform a series of experiments which measure two of the following variables: shock velocity, particle velocity, pressure, and volume. However, there are drawbacks to this approach for porous (granular) explosives. Fortunately, computational methods have been developed which yield the Hugoniot of inert, porous materials when the Hugoniot of the non-porous material is known. If these computational methods can be applied to porous explosives, much work and expense can be saved. In this study, the authors have applied these computational methods to porous TNT for a range of densities from 1.60 to 0.98 g/cc. This method was confirmed by experimentally obtaining the Hugoniot for unreacted TNT at a density of 0.98 g/cc over the range of particle velocities of 0.350 - 1.720 mm/microsec and of pressures of 3.6 - 55.0 kbar.