Detonation shock and ignition dynamics in condensed phase explosives

Saenz, Juan A.

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Description

Title

Detonation shock and ignition dynamics in condensed phase explosives

Author(s)

Saenz, Juan A.

Issue Date

2011-01-21T22:46:07Z

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Stewart, Donald S.

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Stewart, Donald S.

Committee Member(s)

• Austin, Joanna M.
• Glumac, Nick G.
• Matalon, Moshe

Department of Study

Mechanical Sci & Engineering

Discipline

Theoretical & Applied Mechans

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Detonation
• Detonation Shock Dynamics (DSD)
• Modeling

Abstract

We investigate the ignition and dynamics of detonation waves in condensed phase explosives using direct numerical simulations and asymptotic analysis. We develop a model to simulate deflagration to detonation transition in pentaerythritol tetranitrate powders. The model uses a continuum mechanics formulation of conservation laws for a mixture of solid reactants and gas products, written in terms of mixture quantities, plus two independent variables used to account for exothermic conversion of solid reactants into gas products, and compaction associated with pore collapse and grain rearrangement. We propose a simple empirical dependence of the reaction rate on the initial bed compaction that allows us to calibrate the model for a wide range of initial conditions. For the solid reactants we use a wide ranging equation of state. We suggest phenomenological closure relations, consistent with the limit of a compressible inert material and of a solid fully reactive material, such that the equation of state can be posed only in terms of mixture quantities and the reaction and compaction variables. We demonstrate the model's ability to capture deflagration to detonation transition in pentaerythritol tetranitrate powders by matching transients typically observed in experiments, through simulation. We develop an asymptotic formulation to calculate an intrinsic relation between the shock acceleration, velocity and curvature of self-sustained detonation waves in the limit of small time variation and small curvature of the lead shock front in condensed phase explosives. The formulation is developed in terms of a general, incomplete equation of state with composition variables to represent scalar quantities for a general range of phenomena. The results presented here are the first calculations obtained from asymptotic detonation shock dynamics relations for general material models. The formulation is a generalization of an asymptotic theory for a polytropic equation of state and a single step Arrhenius reaction rate model. We discuss the assumptions and justify the generalizations made that allow the use of general form incomplete equations of state. We test the proposed theory by calculating quasi-steady relations between detonation velocity and curvature and the dynamics of ignition events in a reactive hydrogen-oxygen mixture using an ideal equation of state and single step Arrhenius reaction rate model, and compare the results with those obtained using the original asymptotic theory. We find that quasi-steady relations between detonation velocity and curvature calculated using the proposed theory are in better agreement with numerical calculations than the original theory. We also use an equation of state that realistically represents condensed phase explosives, and two composition variables to track reaction and compaction processes, to perform calculations of quasi-steady relations between detonation velocity and curvature, detonation shock acceleration fields as a function of detonation velocity and curvature, and the dynamics of ignition events in solid PBX9501 and in PETN powders. We compare our results with numerical calculations of detonation shock dynamics and direct numerical simulations. We find that the time it takes an ignition wave to become quasi-steady is short, explaining why the quasi-steady relation between the detonation velocity and curvature can sometimes be a good approximation for a speed rule.

Graduation Semester

2010-12

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/18562

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2010 by Juan A Saenz. All rights reserved.

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