Thin pulse experiments performed at -55°C on TATB-based explosives

Experiments were performed at -55°C to measure the thin pulse shock initiation of TATB-based explosive formulations to build on previous experiments at ambient temperature. A thin stainless steel flyer plate backed by a low-density foam was used to generate the thin pulse, and the experiments were performed in a pressure regime where the thin pulse input was high enough to cause a transition to detonation at ambient temperature. This process entailed a redesign of previous hardware utilized to perform similar experiments to minimize material usage and prevent damage to the test chamber, as well as validation of temperature profiles within the target using thermocouples embedded in manganin gauges. Information about temperature-based kinetics of TATB can be gleaned from these tests, and data obtained can be used to inform computational models in development. A discussion of this work will include the experimental parameters, data analysis, run-distance-to-detonation comparisons to prior ambient temperature results, possible comparisons to modelling and simulation results, as well as detail on potential future experiments. This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344.