Effects of HMX particle size on the shock initiation of PBXC03 explosive

Abstract

A series of shock initiation experiments are performed on the PBXC03 explosives in different formulations to understand the influence of the explosive particle size on the shock initiation, and the in-situ pressure gauge data are obtained which show that shock sensitivity decreases with the explosive particle size under the test condition used in this paper. Moreover, a mesoscopic reaction rate model which is calibrated by the experimental data on a medium formulation PBXC03 explosive is adopted and then applied to predict numerically the shock initiation of other PBXC03 explosives in different formulations. The numerical results are in good agreement with the experimental data. © 2012 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston.