Capturing Changes in Explosive Sensitivity with Initial Temperature using xHVRB*

It has been shown that explosives demonstrate altered sensitivity to their shock to detonation transition (SDT) with temperature [1-2]. The reactive flow model xHVRB in Sandia’s shock physics code CTH has been shown previously to capture changes in explosive sensitivity with initial density [3]. This capability has been extended to capture changes in explosive sensitivity with initial temperature and will be demonstrated on a set of previously published embedded gage data for the explosive PBX-9502 [1-2]. This capability includes the ability to model explosives with a temperature gradient, wherein the model will update the sensitivity of each cell of explosive in the code based on its initial temperature, and the effects of graded temperature on explosive performance can be captured.   

 

^[1]Gustavsen, Richard L., Gehr, Russell J., Bucholtz, Scott M., Alcon, Robert R., and Bartram, Brian D. J. Appl. Phys. 112, 074909 (2012)

^[2]Gustavsen, Richard L., Gehr, Russell J., Bucholtz, Scott M., Pacheco, Adam H., and Bartram, Brian D. J. AIP Conference Proceedings 1793, 030017 (2017)

^[3]Damm, David and Tuttle, Leah, “Extension of the xHVRB Reactive Burn Model for Graded Density Explosives”, AIP Conference Proceedings (in progress)