Sub-sonic thermal explosions investigated by radiography

This paper reviews the past 5 years of experiments utilizing radiographic techniques to study defiagration in thermal explosions in HMX based formulations. Details of triggering and timing synchronization are given. Radiographic images collected using both protons and x-rays are presented. Comparisons of experiments with varying size, case confinement, binder, and synchronization are presented. Techniques for quantifying the data in the images are presented and a mechanism for post-ignition burn propagation in a thermal explosion is discussed. From these experiments, we have observed a mechanism for sub-sonic defiagration with both gas phase convective and solid phase conductive burning. The convective front velocity is directly measured from the radiographic images and consumes only a small fraction of the HE. It lights the HE as it passes beginning the slower solid state conductive burn process. This mechanism is used to create a model to simulate the radiographic results and a comparison will be shown.