Thermal decomposition models for HMX-based plastic bonded explosives

A historical and current perspective on predicting thermal cookoff behavior

“…We will return to a comparison of DSC and macroscopic thermal explosion experiments in a later section. Probably the most successful approach at predicting large-scale thermal explosions is due to Tarver and coworkers, who developed simple sequential and autocatalytic kinetic models for a variety of explosives over the past 25 years (13)(14)(15)(16)(17). The approach assumes temperature-dependent thermal properties of both the solid and gas phases, uses activation energies similar to those in more complicated mechanisms, and optimizes the kinetic parameters against ODTX experiments.…”

Mesoscale modeling of deflagration-induced deconsolidation in polymer-bonded explosives

“…Parameters for the strength, equation-of-state, heat capacity, and conductivity are shown in Table 1. Room temperature thermal transport properties are given in Table 1 [16]. HMX product gas equation-of-state and thermal transport properties were taken from literature [16,17].…”

Data Analysis, Pre-Ignition Assessment, and Post-Ignition Modeling of the Large-Scale Annular Cookoff Tests

“…However, our present knowledge about the chemical kinetics of thermal decomposition in PBX-9501 requires that we make several simplifying assumptions about the thermophysical and thermochemical properties of the intermediate constituents and reduce the number of kinetic steps. Despite the complexity of thermal decomposition of energetic materials, firm steps have in fact been taken toward understanding the kinetics, and several simplified schemes have been proposed and applied to specific problems with some success (McGuire and Tarver 1981;Brill and Karpowicz 1982;Thynell et al 1996;Henson et al 1999;Dickson et al 2000;Henson et al 2002;a-b, Behrens 2002Tarver and Tran 2004). Recently, there has also been considerable effort to experimentally quantify the behavior of PBX-9501 when subjected to a wide range of thermal and shear-rate conditions (Tappan et al 2002;Thompson et al 2002;Kaneshige et al 2002;Asay et al 2003;Kaneshige et al 2003;Smilowitz et al 2003;Kaneshige et al 2004;Maienschein et al 2000;Maienschein et al 2004…”

“…Currently, we have adequate tools for heat transfer analysis, but we do not have a preignition predictive capability yet. We are using the kinetics developed by Dickson et al (1999Dickson et al ( , 2000 and by Tarver and Tran (2004) and can predict, a posteriori, the time-toignition in the LSAC geometry by enforcing estimated boundary conditions and/or resorting to modification of the kinetic parameters.…”

“…For instance, the scheme proposed by Tarver and Tran (2004) for the thermal decomposition of PBX-9501 assumes that the HMX reaction is independent of the binder kinetics. It appears that the binder plays a role on the ignition of PBX-9501 during cookoff as suggested by Kaneshige et al (2003) and from recent unpublished experiments by Behrens.…”