Small-Scale Characterization of Shock Sensitivity for Non-Ideal Explosives Based on Imaging of Detonation Failure Behavior

The plethora of potential homemade explosive (HME) formulations combined with the fact they often exhibit large critical diameters make them expensive to characterize with traditional large-scale tests. A relatively new method for small-scale characterization was investigated using non-ideal explosive charges consisting of ammonium nitrate (AN) and various fuels. Here, we extend this method using an optical characterization technique that utilizes the decay rate of the reaction wave velocity in failing detonations of sub-critical diameter charges as a metric for the shock sensitivity of an explosive. The utility of this small-scale characterization technique lies in its ability to determine the relative shock sensitivity of explosive with minimal material and experiments while simultaneously providing transient velocity data for potential use in modeling efforts. In this work, high speed imaging was used and analyzed to determine rates of reaction wave velocity decay in the AN-fuel samples. Among the fuels tested with AN were diesel (ANFO), nitromethane (ANNM), and aluminum (AN-Al).