Simplified Synthetic Porous HE Microstructures for Numerical Modeling, Motivated by CT & Populated by USAXS

Micro- and nano- Computed Tomography (CT) reveal that real High-Explosive (HE) microstructures are bewilderingly complex. Contemporary numerical simulations favor simplified prescriptions that retain the essence of sensitizing porous struc-tures, while discarding their expendable complexity. One seeks prescriptions which, as Einstein famously put it, are “as simple as possible but no simpler.” CT visualizes the predominate structure and therefore motivates reduced structural models; however, it lacks the spatial resolution needed to populate them. Ultra Small-Angle X-ray Scattering (USAXS)—while it doesn’t image the HE microstructure—quantifies many of its essential features at relevant spatial scales. Thus are CT and USAXS best used together, with USAXS populating CT-motivated structure models. We offer two such simplified synthetic porous HE microstructures, and calibrate them for a few HEs for which the requisite USAXS data currently exists.