The Role of Soot Formation in TATB Detonation

The detonation of carbon-rich CHNO-based insensitive high explosives (HEs) yields carbonaceous precipitates, or soots, the formation of which may increase the reaction zone to the microsecond regime, compared to tens of nanoseconds for conventional HEs. In particular, triaminotrinitrobenzene (TATB)-based HEs produce soots with a relatively large nitrogen content, which may further affect explosive performance by attenuating energy release during detonation. The exact chemical composition and thermodynamic properties of TATB-based soots are still under investigation. Therefore, in this work, we use recent measurements of soot composition, experimental detonation data, and the thermochemical code Cheetah, to predict the equation of state of TATB soot by numerical optimization. These results will inform future experimental and theoretical efforts towards understanding TATB detonation.

This work performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344

LLNL-ABS-816282