Development of Predictive Multiscale Constitutive Models for Pressed Energetic Materials to Resolve the Shock to Detonation Transition*

Predicting the initiation of energetic materials (EM) under a variety of stimuli and thermodynamic conditions will result in much needed insight into the connection between basic chemical and microstructural properties and the detonation performance. Current experimental characterization of novel energetic materials can be both costly and time-consuming, thus resulting in a lack of materials property data necessary to deploy accurate constitutive models into existing simulation methods. These poorly constrained simulations can only provide a qualitative understanding of the shock-to-detonation process. We propose a multiscale framework that leverages different computational methods to study materials behavior across a variety of shock conditions and length- and time-scales. Parameterization of continuum-scale chemical kinetics and strength models are derived directly from higher fidelity simulation codes to efficiently study hotspot dynamics in pressed EMs. This talk will detail our computational approach for generating training as well as validating continuum predictions with available experiments. We will demonstrate the viability for this multiscale approach to provide rapid progress toward accurate strength and reaction kinetic models beyond what is experimentally capable.