Behavior of Minimum Signature Propellants During Impact ITests on Insensitive Munitions

Predicting the violent behavior of energetic materials in accident scenarios is an important issue for the analysis of the performance of explosives and solid rocket propellants. We propose a computational program to predict the shock initiation behavior and subsequent energy release that leads to violent reaction of minimum signature propellants under several impact threat conditions. The modeling effort will focus on multiscale, multiphysics simulations using verified and validated models on high-performance parallel computer platforms. Both double-base and composite-modified double-base propellants will be examined. A critical component of our effort will consist of highly resolved mesoscale modeling calculations. These are crucial to bridging the enormous gap between device-scale models that are often based on empirical descriptions rather than first principles, and atomistic scale models that take into account the underlying discrete nature of matter, but are often difficult to relate to engineering-scale results. Our multiscale, chemo-thermo-mechanical approach to modeling and simulation of shock physics will explicitly address physical features and phenomena at the macro- (device), meso- (aggregate of crystals) and micro-scales (individual crystal) in an integrated manner.