Electrostatic hazards assessment of nitramine explosives: Resistivity, charge accumulation and discharge sensitivity

Abstract

The electrostatic hazards of nitramine explosives (RDX, HMX) were assessed in this paper. The resistivities of different particle-size RDX and HMX were tested by a device designed and manufactured according to the standard ISO/IEC 80079-20-2:2016. This work shows that the resistivities of uncompacted RDX and HMX increase as the particle size decreases. Charging characteristics test experiments were also carried out using a so-called sieve method. Using this method, the influence of aperture size on charge accumulation of RDX was studied, and the characteristics of electrostatic accumulation of different particle-size RDX and HMX sieved with 50 mesh standard sieve were compared. The results show that the absolute value of the charge accumulation increases as the mesh number increases (i.e. the aperture size decreases), and increases as the particle size is decreased, indicating that nano-sized RDX and nano-sized HMX accumulate static electricity more easily than conventional micron-sized ones. Finally, the electrostatic discharge (ESD) sensitivity of nano-sized RDX and nano-sized HMX was investigated. Nano-sized nitramine explosives were found to have a higher ESD sensitivity than micron-sized ones.