Energetics of Late Chemical Reactions of Metals in Nonideal Underwater Detonations

Although nonideal explosives are rapidly becoming the workhorses of the military services and industry, they are, as yet, poorly understood. In Phase I, we will begin to model the behavior of these explosives based on a new physical model of the fundamental reaction processes and on the most current scientific understanding of the physical behavior of the solid and fluid components of explosives during and subsequent to the reaction processes. Model development will be completed in Phase II, incorporated into a hydrodynamics code, and validated against the known behavior of three explosives, each in a different class; one ideal, one nonideal, and one in a separate class which we define as totally nonideal. In the latter class, fuel and oxidizer are separated, being in different grains of the composite explosive. Once this task is completed, behavioral predictions will be made for cases not reported in the experimental data base. In this way the predictive code can be verified as truly predictive by subsequent experiments. In Phase I all the physical data, and much of the analysis necessary for the construction and implementation of the code will be detailed. In this Phase, three explosives will be selected and everything necessary for their modeling in the hydrocode will be presented. In Phase II, three practical applications to military and industrial problems will be made. Here existing explosives will be tailored in their composition to maximize desirable explosive effects. In addition, it will be possible to predict the behavior of entirely new explosive compositions, thus providing a rationale for the development of promising explosive types.