Ultrafast Shock Interrogation of Hydrogen Peroxide/Water Mixtures: Thermochemical Predictions of Shock Condition Chemistry

Hydrogen peroxide is a powerful oxidizer and its concentrated aqueous solutions exhibit very high reactivity, even sustaining detonation under strong enough confinement. Due to its simple composition and basic expected decomposition kinetics hydrogen peroxide is very suitable for studying the interplay of high pressures, temperatures and reactivity and their effect on the equation of state, particularly at the boundary between detonating and non-detonating behavior. To this end we performed speed of sound and picosecond time resolved shock measurements on solutions of hydrogen peroxide of concentrations from 30 to 90 percent, and analyzed the results in terms of common assumptions of chemical equilibrium in reactive fluid mixtures. Experimental shock states were achieved up to a maximum pressure of 20 GPa with corresponding shock velocities of 6-7 km/sec.