Investigating novel nitrate-ester based explosives with newly developed diagnostics.

Understanding how chemical structure affects explosive handling sensitivities remains a difficult goal in the development of novel energetic molecules, which is further convoluted by molecular characteristics (e.g. melting points, crystal packing density, powder particle size). Additionally, the interplay of multiple physical phenomena occurring in small scale sensitivity experiments further complicates attempts to tease out which molecular characteristic is responsible for the observed sensitivity. Recently, we have described a series of structurally identical liquid explosives that increase in handling safety with increasing hydrogen saturation, where theoretical calculations suggest potential for bimolecular reactions to take place in the unsaturated explosives and may account for the drastically decreased handling safety. This work aims to investigate potential bimolecular reactions by the design of saturated and unsaturated pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) derivatives that are tested with new diagnostics developed within our group. The data discussed include heating on the order of microsecond timescales by the High Explosive Initiation Time (HEIT) to assess Arrhenius kinetic trends and imaging of sub-shock viscoplastic flow and ignition by our Viscoplastic Ignition and Propagation Imaging of Reactions (VIPIR) modified drop weight impact tests.