We report a series of time-resolved spectroscopic measurements that aim to characterize the reactions that occur during shock initiation of high explosives. The experiments employ time-and wavelength-resolved emission spectroscopy to analyze light emitted from detonating thin explosive films. This paper presents analysis of optical emission spectra from hexanitrostilbene (HNS) and pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) thin film samples. Both vibrationally resolved and broadband emission features are observed in the spectra and area as electronic transitions of intermediate species.
Physical vapor deposition is a technique that can be used to produce explosive films with controlled geometry and microstructure. Films of the high explosive hexanitroazobenzene (HNAB) were deposited by vacuum thermal evaporation. HNAB deposits in an amorphous state that crystallizes over time into a polycrystalline material with high density and a consistent porosity distribution. In previous work, we evaluated detonation critical thickness in HNAB films in an effectively infinite slab geometry with insignificant side losses. In this work, the effect of geometry on detonation failure was investigated by performing experiments on films with different thicknesses, while also changing lateral dimensions such that side losses became significant. The experimental failure thickness was determined to be 75.5 μm and 71.6 μm, for 400 μm and 1600 μm wide HNAB lines, respectively. It follows from this that the minimum width to achieve detonation behavior representing an infinite slab configuration is greater than 400 μm.
In both continuum hydrodynamics simulations and also multimillion atom reactive molecular dynamics simulations of shockwave propagation in single crystal pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) containing a cylindrical void, we observed the formation of an initial radially symmetric hot spot. By extending the simulation time to the nanosecond scale, however, we observed the transformation of the small symmetric hot spot into a longitudinally asymmetric hot region extending over a much larger volume. Performing reactive molecular dynamics shock simulations using the reactive force field (ReaxFF) as implemented in the LAMMPS molecular dynamics package, we showed that the longitudinally asymmetric hot region was formed by coalescence of the primary radially symmetric hot spot with a secondary triangular hot zone. We showed that the triangular hot zone coincided with a double-shocked region where the primary planar shockwave was overtaken by a secondary cylindrical shockwave. The secondary cylindrical shockwave originated in void collapse after the primary planar shockwave had passed over the void. A similar phenomenon was observed in continuum hydrodynamics shock simulations using the CTH hydrodynamics package. The formation and growth of extended asymmetric hot regions on nanosecond timescales has important implications for shock initiation thresholds in energetic materials.
